Plants
& Field Trips - November 2006
(Click
on thumbnails for larger images)
October 29 - November 5
October
29, Leyte, Leyte Province, Tacloban to Baybay
I had a week-long collecting trip to Leyte with Dr. Fernando.
We left for Manila at 6:30 am to get a Cebu Pacific flight to
Tacloban, Leyte. The domestic terminal at Ninoy Aquino
Airport is quite small. We had to go through security
checkpoints to enter the terminal. There are separate lines
for men and women, and interestingly enough, the line for women moved
more quickly. As with other airports, liquids are banned in
carry-on luggage, but in the departure waiting area, you can buy food
and drink. The restrooms were clean but only had a few
stalls, so it was good that I went well before our plane was called.
I've been in bus stations that have a larger waiting room
than the domestic airport, but flights depart regularly so it wasn't
too crowded. We had to walk out onto the runway and climb a
set of stairs to board the airplane. This is not a country to
travel in if you are physically disabled and like to be independently
mobile. The plane was fairly new, with 26 rows of 6 seats.
The flight lasted about an hour and I had a good view of
little beach-rimmed islands and large areas that looked like forest
until the plane got low enough so I could see that they were really
coconut plantations. The airport in Tacloban has one runway.
We landed, came to a stop, and turned around to taxi to the
terminal, which was a small building with a counter for claiming
checked baggage. We were met by two men with a van, and then
we drove down the road a bit to stop for lunch.
The restaurant was right on the beach and was on the rustic end, but
the food was excellent. We had fresh shrimp (unshelled)
cooked in a sweet oily sauce, fish soup, and raw fish with pineapple
and a few vegetables. I didn't try the raw fish, even though
it was the only source of vegetables. I know some people
believe that lime juice will kill parasites and bacteria, but I'm not
one of them, and although I ended up putting my health at risk in
several other ways during the Leyte trip, I drew the line at eating raw
fish. I broke down and started eating with my hands in Leyte
too, partly because you just can't shell shrimp with a spoon, and
partly because I hadn't brought a spoon with me and most of our meals
in the field were of the bring-your-own-spoon-and-plate variety.
I thought we were going to head straight for Baybay, where we were
meeting some people from Leyte State University (LSU), but we headed
for a place called Barangay Tigbao (Tacloban) first. Dr.
Fernando was looking for peat swamp forest, or nipaw, and he'd heard
that there was some in Tigbao. We went down a small road and
didn't see much, then stopped along the main road to look at a palm (Livistonia) growing
in a swampy area. At one time much of the lowlands of Leyte
were probably covered with nipaw forest, but almost all of it is gone,
cleared for rice cultivation. The open field at the edge of
the swampy area was sandy, with Cyperaceae in fruit, a trailing
Convolvulaceae with yellow flowers, and a small flowering tree that I
couldn't identify, though it reminded me a bit of Celtis. Metroxylon sagu
(Arecaceae) and a purple water lily grew in the swampy area.
Later it would turn out that we were just on the wrong end of
Tigbao to find the swamp that Dr. Fernando had been wanting to find.
The drive to Baybay was long and twisty through the
mountains. Most of the land was coconut plantations, with
occasional large trees of Petersianthus
(Lecythidaceae), which are apparently a pain to cut, even though
they're used for veneer and plywood. I saw a few tall dead
palms towering over the coconuts - the remains of Corypha,
which is
monocarpic like the sagu palm. We reached LSU, checked into
the hostel, and had dinner with Dr. Ceniza, the director of LSU's
Institute of Tropical Ecology, and Marlito Bande, a botany instructor,
before meeting a group of MS students who traveled around the island
with us. I had a bit of time to walk on the beach before
dinner. The beach was rocky, with few shells and seaweed and
a fair bit of trash. I took a picture of a hermit crab that
was inhabiting one of the shells I found.
October 30, Leyte Province, San
Miguel and Tigbao
Dr. Fernando and I had breakfast Dr. Ceniza at her house on
campus. After we had eaten, a mid-sized truck showed up with
the MS students in it. The back of the truck was open, with
bench seats - a standard form of transportation in the Philippines.
The truck, which was owned by LSU, then drove off to get a
fan belt repaired. I don't know how many places you can get a
fan belt repaired at 8 am in the US, but the truck returned before too
long and we loaded ourselves and our stuff onto it. I was
going to leave a box with some of my belongings at our host's house,
since we had checked out of the hostel, but someone else decided to put
the box on the truck. We headed up the west coast of Leyte
toward Alangalang, where there was a branch of LSU. I rode in
the cab that first day, which wasn't too cool despite the air
conditioner because the engine was under the seats. We
stopped at one point along the way at a place that was selling
machetes, and all the men in the truck piled out to look at them.
Several
knives of various sizes and lengths were purchased and used during the
trip. I don't know if it was a planned stop, or an
opportunity that looked too good to pass up. I used the stop
to take a picture of the shop - I was more interested in the palm
thatching, which is created by folding over half of the leaflets on a
coconut frond and tying them in place to make what amounts to a
shingle. The shingles are then overlapped on the roof,
although those who can afford it use galvanized iron instead.
We made a brief stop in Alangalang to get a few keys and to buy food
for lunch, and then we headed down a small road in San Miguel.
Leyte is more rural than the areas of Luzon I've been to so
far, and many of the houses we passed were very small and constructed
of woven or nailed slats of bamboo. Large areas of the
lowlands are under rice cultivation, and the recent harvest was drying
in the sun on any available flat surface, from basketball courts and
parking lots to tarps on the road. Sometimes tarps weren't
even used - the rice was just raked into rectangles along the road and
we drove right over it. I didn't get a picture of the world's
largest solar dryer (roads that stretch from northern Luzon to southern
Mindanao) on this trip, but I did learn why there are often small
stones in my rice. We stopped at one small house and had
lunch - the family lent us a few chairs, a table, and some glasses.
The students had brought lunch in plastic containers, but I
used a plastic bag as my plate and my fingers as my spoon and fork.
After lunch we crossed the road and started our field work.
The first adventure of the day included crossing a
shoulder-deep stream on a tethered bamboo raft. We had all
changed into slippers before walking to the stream, and it was a good
thing because we had to wade into the stream to get onto the raft, and
the water would have been above my hiking boots.
Unfortunately, that made my slippers wet and when I was
trying to scramble up the steep bank on the other side, my foot slipped
and broke the middle strap of my slippers. One of the
students, Jimmie, made me trade slippers with him (his had no strap
between the toes) and later he repaired the slipper, first with a bit
of palm frond and later with some nylon rope I had. We wound
our way through scrappy forest on low hills and around rice fields
before coming to what looked like an abandoned rice field with rows of
trees. The trees were Nauclea
orientalis (Rubiaceae), which
is a characteristic species of nipaw forest. It seemed to me
that the trees were planted because they were in straight rows, but Dr.
Fernando insisted that they weren't. There were some
blue-throated bee eaters swooping and perching, and some birds that
looked remarkably like the Asian martins in my bird guide, except the
martins have only been reported twice (1903) from the northernmost
Philippine islands. They were probably some other kind of
martin, swallow, or swift. I had left my camera in the truck
accidentally, so I
didn't get pictures of this part of the trip. It started
raining as we headed back, so we stopped on the porch of someone's
bamboo hut and several students raided his guava tree for green guavas
after asking permission. They
were not too sweet and had an interesting spicy flavor.
 Photo:
E. S. Fernando |
We then headed to the highway from Tigbao to Santa Fe in Tacloban
municipality. The term "highway" is used loosely here - it
was a potholed dirt road. After a brief stop at the Leyte
Integrated Resource Management Center to take pictures of Xanthostemon verdugonianus
(Myrtaceae), we headed across swampy fields in search of nipaw forest
remnants. The swampy fields had frogs, dragonflies, pink
snail eggs, swallows, various grasses and sedges, and a variety of
flowering herbs. I lost count of how many times I lost one or
both slippers in the mud, and I ended up going barefoot through some
places rather than have to retrieve my slippers with each step.
The water ranged from warm to quite cold in places, depending
on how deep it was and where currents were flowing. I saw a
Cyperaceae (cf. Scirpus)
that's used for making mats and had my ankles shredded by some kind of
cut-grass. After
about an hour of slogging, we reached our goal - Terminalia copelandii
(Combretaceae), which only grows in swamp forest remnants.
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Photo:
E. S. Fernando |
 Photo:
E. S. Fernando |
 Photo:
E. S. Fernando |
Also in the area were Pandanus,
a giant Alocasia
(Araceae), and more Nauclea
orientalis.
We took an easier route out, walking along the ridge between
two rice fields (a lot more difficult than it looks), and had juice
from freshly picked green
coconuts at the home of the rice farmers. I learned that the
black notches cut into the trunk of almost every coconut in the country
are footholds for climbing to reach the fruit. I was more
than a little muddy and scratched up by the time we left the swamp, and
if I get schistosomiasis, I'll know where I was infected. We
went back to Alangalang and cooked dinner in a fire pit behind the
Foods Trade building, where we ate and slept on the floor (or on chairs
or tables) on thin mattresses (or quilts).
October
31, Leyte Province, Babatngon, Barangay Bakong, coastal road
We breakfasted, packed up, and managed to get on the road somewhere
around 9 am. Alex, the truck driver, headed to Babatngon and
stopped at a steep roadside hill along the coast. The area
had ultramafic forest fragments bordering kaingan (slash & burn
agriculture) plots. Ultramafic refers to the soils or
bedrocks of an area, indicating that they have high metal contents that
some plants can't tolerate. The bits of rock I saw seemed to
be some kind of schist, though weathering is so extensive in the
tropics that I couldn't be completely certain. The forest was
short and seemed to me like it was adapted to drought, which may just
have been a reaction to the intense heat, but probably had some truth
because there was almost no topsoil. We scrambled up the
slope to find a whole number of species, most of which
I didn't photograph because the canopy was just out of reach (not to
mention it was hard not to slide down the
slope). Along the
road edge, I saw a white Polygala,
Scaevola taccada
(Goodeniaceae), Fagraea
(Loganiaceae) in fruit, Melastoma,
a Cyperaceae, a tall Juncaceae, blooming and fruiting Xanthostemon verdugonianus
(Myrtaceae), Cassytha
(Lauraceae), Nauclea
(Rubiaceae), Phyllanthus
(Euphorbiaceae), Wikstroemia
(Thymelaeaceae), and a white Malvaceae. In the woods on the
slope we found Psychotria
(Rubiaceae), Lygodium
(Schizaeaceae), Flagellaria
indica, Heterospathe
intermedia (Arecaceae), Cratoxylum
(Hypericaceae), Diospyros
(Ebenaceae), Jasminum
(Oleaceae), Buchanania
(Anacardiaceae), and Garcinia
(Clusiaceae). On the other side of the road, there was a
large Cerbera
(manghas or
odollam,
Apocynaceae).
At the top of the hillside, I had a very clear view of the surrounding
area, including the sharp delineation between forest and agriculture.
The view over the bay was beautiful, but in other directions
the view wasn't so pleasant. I could see where large areas of
the land had been converted to kaingan. Kaingan effectively
removes the ultramafic forest, but the soils aren't really suited to
agriculture, so crops don't do well. I know that if I return
in a few years, more of the ultramafic forest will have been destroyed.
I admired the views (at least the ones that showed minimal
destruction) and took pictures of two dragonflies that were resting on
grasses in the hilltop field.
We piled back into the truck, made our way back to the Welcome sign for
Barangay Bakong, and turned left to reach a rocky beach where we had
lunch. I didn't see any sandy beaches in Leyte, but the rocks
were a mix of rounded volcanic and metamorphic rocks. Several
different kinds of coral were also scattered over the beach, and I
found a number of familiar shells, including murex, olives,
scallops, clams, whelks, oysters, limpets, and snails.
Lunch was rice and fish, spread out on a freshly picked
banana leaf. A flowering Terminalia
catappa (Combretaceae) provided shade, and we watched a
bird circling and diving for fish. Marlito said it was a sea
eagle, but when I checked my bird guide later, I decided that it had to
have been a Brahminy Kite, with its white head, chestnut back and
wings, and black primaries underneath. You can find much
better images of this bird on the web, but I considered myself lucky to
get this shot as it flew away - it was good enough for me to ID the
kite later.
A thunderstorm starting coming over the hills as we continued down the
provincial road to San Miguel. Calling it a road is generous
- right after the beach the road turned into a motorcycle track, and
after we reached the next village, the "road" was the beach.
We got a nice look at remnants of beach forest as it began to
pour. Morinda
citrifolia (Rubiaceae) was flowering. The
Filipino name is "noni," which refers to the juice that's made from the
fruits. There were at least two different species of Ardisia
(Myrsinaceae) in fruit, Pongamia
pinnata (Fabaceae) and Premna littorea
(Lamiaceae) in flower, more Scaevola
taccada, a fern growing down a rock face, a Clusia,
Pandanus tectorius
in fruit, Hibiscus
tiliaceus (Malvaceae), Intsia bijuga
(Fabaceae), Excoecaria
agallocha (Euphorbiaceae), Cerbera cf. odollam
(Apocynaceae) in flower, a pink ground orchid with almost closed
flowers, a Dalbergia
(Fabaceae) with white flowers, and a Buchanania
(Anacardiaceae). It stopped raining just as we turned around
to head back.
We made a few stops on the drive back to Baybay. The first
was for a palm, probably an undescribed species of Heterospathe with
pink inflorescences and small white fruit, growing on a hillside next
to the road. The second stop was by a crumbling hillside with
a burned kaingan plot opposite. I scrambled up the hill to
get a better view, and found an interesting fern growing in the soft
yellowish soil. Our last stop was by a large Shorea astylosa
(Dipterocarpaceae) that measured 90.5 cm dbh. Several people
threw rocks at the crown until a small twig with leaves broke off and
fell to the ground. It's difficult to collect leaves from a
tree that has its first branch about 20 m off the ground. Our
last stop was a the pier restaurant where Dr. Fernando and I ate our
first night in Leyte - lots of grilled chicken, pancit, and Coke.
November 1, Leyte Province,
Baybay, Barangay Visca, Leyte State University Nature Park, Mt.
Pangasugan
November 1st is a national holiday in the Philippines - All Souls' Day,
when people visit cemeteries to decorate graves or tombs and honor
their loved ones. We celebrated by meeting up with several
members of the LSU group and heading up Mt. Pangasugan. I had
a record of a Gomphandra
that was collected from the area, so I knew I could probably find a few
trees on the mountain. We walked up a paved road to the
Tarsier Sanctuary trail (no tarsiers in sight) and met our guide at the
Visca nursery. The guide led us through forest along Hubasan
Creek, which was dry at the time. The forest was mostly
composed of small trees, with ferns, palms, Donax
(Marantaceae), Selaginella,
bananas, and bamboo. Dr. Fernando spotted a Korthalsia laciniosa
and a Pinanga copelandii
(Arecaceae), but said that almost all of the
palms he'd seen during a
visit around 1990 had been cut, reducing diversity to just a
few
species. I found a downed tree with a large bracket fungus
and black-and-yellow feeding on the fungus. While we paused
for a water break, I took many
pictures of a filmy fern, trying to get a good shot of the lip-shaped
sporangia. I don't use a tripod, but there are times when I
wish I had one, especially for situations where my digital camera
refuses to admit that there's enough light.
After the break, we headed up a hill so steep that in places I had to
dig my fingers into the dirt to keep from sliding downhill.
When trees were handy, I used them to pull myself up, but
saplings would have just come out of the ground, so I avoided using
them for help. Partway up the slope I paused to take a couple
photographs of germinating seeds of
Dipterocarpus validus. The fallen leaves from
the parent tree were very large, with accordion pleats between the
secondary veins. The seedlings had very hairy stems.
Dipterocarp seeds (at least Dipterocarpus)
don't seem to have much of a dormancy period before they sprout.
At the top of our scramble up the hill, but still not at the
top of the slope, we came into a farmed clearing. I was
surprised to see that someone was growing abaca (Musa textilis)
there - it seemed too steep and difficult to reach, but I've since come
to the conclusion that for Filipinos, there is no slope too steep to
farm. We saw a large Pterocymbium
tinctorium (Malvaceae), a Strombosia
(Olacaceae), and Erythrina
subumbrans (Fabaceae). Flowers of Radermachera pinnata
(Bignoniaceae) had fallen to the ground (white suffused with pink and
orange in the throat), and we identified a huge Alstonia scholaris
(Apocynaceae) by its smooth bark and the copious white latex that ran
from a cut in the trunk.
As in the past, the presence of Strombosia
heralded the presence of Gomphandra.
On the edge of the next farmed clearing up the slope, I found
two small trees. They weren't reproductive, but the leaves
were clearly different from those of Gomphandra luzoniensis.
Our guide mentioned that there had been larger trees in the
area, but they had all been cut. After taking notes and
making a few collections, we headed around the curve of the hill and
started down the other side. I found one more sapling growing
on a steep hillside just above the point where we stopped for lunch.
I'd never seen a hillside like it - a cliff that was made up
of dirt instead of rock, but dirt packed so tightly it was rock-hard.
Nothing grew on the cliff except a fine covering of moss and
green algae. After lunch, we made our way, with much
tree-hugging, vine-clinging, and triggering of tiny landslides, down to
another dry creek bed. We followed the creek back to the
place where I'd taken the picture of the filmy fern, which had started
to dry out and curl up.
On our way out of the nature park, we stopped again at the Visca
nursery. To my delight, it turned out that in 1995, three
seedlings of Gomphandra
had been planted right next to the nursery building. One was
apparently female, the others were male, and they were all over 10 cm
dbh. The female tree reportedly has yellow fruit in June.
I asked, and one of the MS students agreed to collect flowers
in the spring and fruit in the summer for me.
That evening Dr. Fernando and I had dinner at the house of Marlito
Bande, a teacher at LSU and one of our hosts. I had my first
ride on a motorcycle to get there. It wasn't very far and we
didn't go very fast, but I held on tightly to the back of the seat
because I didn't have a helmet. Marlito's wife had prepared a
tasty dinner for us, but my favorite part was the mangoes we had for
dessert. They were the tastiest mangoes I've ever had, with
no strings. She had sliced out the seeds, and we used spoons
to scoop the smooth flesh out of the peels. Marlito was
amused by my obvious enjoyment and commented that the best Filipino
mangoes are exported. I replied that I couldn't imagine a
better mango than what I was eating.
November 2, Leyte Province,
Ormoc City, Barangay Cabintan, Mt. Janagdan
The trip up to the mossy forest of Mt. Janagdan was the most
botanically rewarding part of the
Leyte trip. I didn't find any Gomphandra, but
most of the 350 pictures I took in Leyte are from November 2 and 3.
We started out with the usual assembly confusion, driving
around to pick up a few people, some tents, and cookware.
Alex, our driver, headed north to Ormoc City, where we parked
in the market area, right by the shore, to buy food for the trip.
I stayed in the back of the truck, but most of the students
headed off to buy fish, rice, and vegetables. Dr. Fernando
went exploring and came back for his camera - he had found a kind of
seaweed for sale and wanted a picture of it. We were probably
there for half an hour. I tried to stay out of the sun,
watched vendors and shoppers, and tried not to breathe in too much of
the aroma of urine, which was very strong because walls tend to serve
as male public urinals, and the sea wall by the truck was no exception.
When we got going again (after brief stops for gas and
water), we ran into a traffic jam. People were still visiting
the cemeteries even though All Souls' Day had passed. One of
the students told me that such a traffic jam was very unusual for
Leyte. He had a hard time believing me when I said that
traffic in Los Baños was like that every day. It's
true though - traffic congestion and pollution from exhaust aren't yet
problems in Leyte.
Not too far from Ormoc City, we turned onto the road that leads to the
foot of Mt. Janagdan, or at least to the foot of the path up the
mountain. The road was paved in places but dirt in others,
with
some spectacular potholes along the way. In general, riding
in
the back of a mid-sized truck isn't good for the spine. Small
houses lined much of the roadside. Most of the houses were
made
of bamboo, but a few were concrete. The electrical line was
secured to trees and the occasional bamboo pole. It was
obvious
that the people living there were quite poor, a dramatic contrast to
the huge walled complexes we'd seen along the main road before turning
to head up the mountain. Despite the presence of the road, I
think traffic must have been uncommon because it seemed like everyone
stood in doorways or at the roadside to watch the truck pass.
When we reached the last village, the truck parked and we
headed
to the village elder's house. He was the person who gave
permission to climb the mountain and kept a visitor log book.
He
wasn't in when we arrived, but his wife lent us dishes for lunch and
made us welcome while we waited. I was a bit surprised by
their
house - it was stuccoed, fairly large, and a young girl was watching a
pirated DVD on a TV that would be moderately expensive in the US.
By US standards, the family would be quite poor, but they
appeared to be much better off than some of their neighbors.
When the village elder (a man in his mid-thirties to early forties)
returned, he told us a bit about Cabintan as a few of us (the slow
botanists, the Lake Danao Park superintendent, and a collecting
assistant) started up the
mountain. The village is situated at 800 m with a population
of
1800, 95 of whom make their living as farmers. There are two
seasons - wet and very wet. The lower slopes of the mountain
are
farmed, with the major crops being cabbage, Chinese cabbage, onions,
and eggplant. Sayote, cassava, a small citrus, and coconut
are also grown, but
the farmers are shifting to growing abaca (Musa textilis)
because it's more profitable. The climate is right for
cool-weather crops, but the soil nutrients are quickly depleted, so
it's very hard to maintain long-term cultivation. The forest
has
been cut right up to the park boundaries in many places.
At the edge where the trail up the mountain was, we stopped to
photograph and collect a red Gesneriaceae growing on a Cyathea tree fern. On a
nearby tree, one of the oddest ferns I've ever seen, an Oleandra, drooped
from the trunk. The leaves were borne in a whorl and
separated by long, densely hairy internodes. As we climbed up
the steep, muddy trail, I saw mosses, liverworts, ferns, and Selaginella
everywhere. Mosquitoes were abundant too. It seems
that the flora of Mt. Janagdan hadn't been very thoroughly studied, so
Dr. Fernando took pictures and made collections of almost every
reproducing species we saw, provided there were several plants around.
Richard, the collecting assistant, was quite good at finding
plants in bloom and we dubbed one of the orchids we found the "military
orchid" in his honor. He was wearing camouflage pants, and
the orchid had spotted flowers and leaves, so it seemed to match.
I have no idea what genus the orchid is in, and I didn't
quite get the flower in focus because of the low light in the forest.
We were soon overtaken by the LSU students and the porters who carried
food and water up to our tenting site. There were too many
plants to hurry, though. I saw quite a few small plants with
pale purple flowers, leaves that were deep purple beneath, and ornately
fringed stipules that allowed me to place them in Rubiaceae.
While climbing over several downed trees, I spotted a Nepenthes alata and
several small yellow-flowered orchids. We noted a Smilax with thorns
and spotted leaves, a rabbit's foot fern (Davallia), and
several Freycinetia
(Pandanaceae) that weren't in bloom. A medium sized ginger
with pink floral bracts wasn't in bloom either, but we saw quite a few
plants. The inflorescences are mashed and used for shampoo.
There was a tiny white-flowered Solanaceae that became more
common as we gained elevation, and I noted several Begonia but didn't
take pictures. Epiphytic orchids were everywhere, though most
weren't in bloom, but we found a Bulbophyllum
perched above our heads near a fabulous cluster of blooming Calanthe lyroglossa.
We encountered bunches of a self-pollinating orchid, Oberonia, which had
tiny orange buds that turned into tiny orange fruit without opening
into flowers in between. As we climbed the final bit towards
our campsite, Dr. Fernando identified some fleshy red fruits on the
ground as having come from a Lithocarpus
(Fagaceae), and I spotted a subshrub that turned out to be Polygala (venenosa?), with
winged white-and-yellow flowers that turned a beautiful rose-purple.
That was the end of the day's climb, but it wasn't the end of the day.
We set up tents in a level area at about 1100 m. It
wasn't a clearing, but we found enough gaps between trees and tree
ferns to stick about 8 tents and a hammock. The cooking area
was set up under a huge trunk/root that formed a right angle about four
feet off the ground, leaving an area big enough for half a dozen people
to squat under a natural wood roof capped with soil, moss, and
epiphytes. The fuel burning stove didn't work for some
reason, so the cooks had to make do with a fire - not an easy task on a
mountain where it rains every day and dry wood is hard to find.
I mostly stayed out of the way while camp was being set up
because there were more people than work, though I helped process a few
specimens and later took photos of a walking stick insect.
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 Photo:
E. S. Fernando |
I had good
cell phone reception on the mountain (unlike in Baybay) so I sent a
couple of text messages. We did a bit of unsuccessful frog
hunting with flashlights - several species were calling, but they were
probably high up in the trees. After dinner finally cooked,
we ate standing up and just as we finished, it started to pour.
Night had fallen around 5:30 pm, and though we'd seen the
moonrise, fog and then clouds had moved in. The tents didn't
have rain covers or ground cloths, and when I ducked into the tent I
was supposed to share, I found that it was raining inside the tent as
well and there was a small swimming pool on the floor to match the one
outside the door. It was raining so hard that water came
through the seams at the ribs of my umbrella. My tent mate
told me that we were moving into a different tent with another student,
so I moved my bag and climbed into a tent that had been put right
outside the cooking "room." I pulled out my fleece sleeping
bag from the bottom of my backpack, and while part of it was wet, I was
able to coax the water down to the foot of the bag. I changed
out of my sodden, muddy clothes (some people had changed earlier and
then gotten wet in the rain) and tried to find a comfortable position.
It was all of 6:30 pm, but it seemed like everyone else was
suddenly ready for bed, and it was still raining out, so I stayed put.
My tent mates moved to yet another tent after about an hour
because they were in a puddle, but only the end of my sleeping bag was
wet so I didn't move. I have to say it wasn't the best
night's sleep I've ever had. The rain stopped eventually but
a tree root dug into my ribs or my hip, I had to keep my knees bent to
keep my feet out of a puddle, and every hour or so someone woke up and
started talking. The sleeping bag kept me almost warm and dry
enough, and I was grateful that my friend Sarah had given it to me.
November 3, Leyte Province,
Ormoc City, Barangay Cabintan, Mt. Janagdan, Lake Janagdan, &
Lake Danao
Morning arrived sometime around 5:30 am. I'm not a stranger
to camping in the rain, so I had stashed my hiking boots under my
opened umbrella for the night, and to my immense satisfaction they were
only slightly damp inside (others were not so lucky). We had
churned the whole area into a mudpit, so there was no possibility of
keeping my boots in the tent during the night. The sun came
out as we had breakfast, and I think everyone's spirits improved.
There's nothing like a cold wet night in a tent to make you
feel miserable, but hot drinks and sunshine have great restorative
powers. We packed up and did a bit of exploring around the
area. Dr. Fernando had been looking for species of Hoya (Apocynaceae),
and I spotted one along the trail just below the campsite.
Further down the hillside, we saw a white-flowered Rubiaceae,
a patch of waist-high Begonia,
Ardisia
(Myrsinaceae) in fruit, Garcinia
(Clusiaceae) in fruit, a blooming Schefflera
(Araliaceae), a blooming Saurauia
(Actinidiaceae), and a Sararanga
philippinensis (Pandanaceae), which had distichously
arranged leaves and prominent prop roots. I took pictures of
another walking stick, and found a fallen white flower that I couldn't
identify, nor could I find its parent plant. One student
spotted a little brown frog, but it had hopped away by the time anyone
else got close enough to see. The walking sticks were the
wildlife highlights of the trip, though we'd heard an owl the night
before. One of the guides said it was a grass owl, but the
habitat was wrong and grass owls have never been recorded from Leyte,
so it was probably one of the three species of scops owls that occurs
in Leyte. I spent a considerable amount of time trying to get
another picture of fern sporangia, this time from small whitish ferns
hanging off the side of a tree trunk.
By 8:30 am, we were ready to hike over the summit to Lake Janagdan.
The lake has no outlet and is fed solely by rain and runoff.
I wasn't clear if it was stocked with fish or if they were
naturally present, but in any case villagers regularly climb the
mountain to go fishing. We'd seen several men pass by on
their way home as we set up camp the evening before. Of
course, there were more plants to see on the way to the lake.
I took a picture of a blooming epiphytic Medinilla
(Melastomataceae), and passed by more of the red gesneriad and another
blooming Calanthe
lyroglossa.
The peak was flat with an understory that reminded me of a
sedge meadow, with fruiting Scleria
and several Cyperaceae in bloom. Past the sedge meadow I saw Curculigo
(Hypoxidaceae) and more gingers. One of the only species of
high elevation palms, Pinanga
philippinensis, grew just off the path at about 1150 m
elevation.
As we began the slippery, muddy descent to the lake, Dr. Fernando found
a Nepenthes alata
in fruit. He explained to one of the students that the
pitchers are modified leaves, not flowers. I took pictures of
a red-fruited Chloranthus,
a three-petaled Melastoma,
and several unidentified plants. At the lake shore, Dr.
Fernando spotted an epiphytic Dendrobium
(Orchidaceae) that had pure white flowers, a fringed lip, and a lovely
fragrance. Around the lake shore, there were tree ferns (Angiopteris), Rubus in fruit,
more Schefflera
in bloom, and a Calamus
multinervis (Arecaceae). The scar of an old
landslide was visible on the opposite side of the lake. Red
dragonflies zipped over the water, some very loud frogs called for
about a minute, and leech had a quick tour of my clipboard before it
was relocated.
Getting down to the lake had been difficult, and getting back up the
path proved to be almost impossible in places. The rain and
many feet combined to make paths very slippery and unstable.
We stopped by the campsite and picked up our gear before
heading down the mountain for good. I used a walking stick on
the way down and mostly concentrated on where I was putting my feet,
but even that didn't keep me from falling down several times, including
one time where I slipped right off a little edge and would have slid
quite far if I hadn't managed to grab a tangle of roots. I
had to be pulled back up to the path - there was no way I could have
climbed up the vertical bank. I stopped to take photos of two
plants on the way out - a beautiful yellow orchid that was perched at
waist height on a tree trunk right next to the path, and an epiphytic
yellow Rhododendron
(Ericaceae) high up in a tree. Dr. Fernando had been looking
for one, and I'd been hoping to see one as well. He didn't
have his camera with him, so I zoomed my lens out as far as it could go
and got a picture. When we got back to the village, everyone
lined up for a "muddy butt" shot - no one had made it down the mountain
without falling at least once. We had a chance to wash up at
the village elder's house before eating a delicious lunch that his
family had prepared from food that had been left with them the day
before.
After lunch, we loaded up the truck and drove down the road to Lake
Danao Natural Park. Though the lake is at a lower elevation
than Mt. Janagdan, it is still surrounded by mossy forest and we
expected to find Gomphandra
there. It started raining as Marlito, Dr. Fernando, and I
headed up a slippery trail above a plantation next to the lake.
We climbed until we reached an illegal clearing that was so
recent the downed vegetation hadn't yet been burned. Despite
peering through the gloom, we didn't see any Gomphandra.
I saw a small tree (Aglaia,
Meliaceae) in flower and found a ground orchid with twisted petals in
bloom. All the flowers on the raceme were in bloom at once.
It was still raining and too dark to take a good picture, so
I picked a single flower and carried it back to the lake shore with me.
As we reached the shore of Lake Danao, the rain stopped and
the sun came out. The truck had left with the students to
wash out the tents in a stream, so Dr. Fernando and I took pictures of
orchids that he had collected while we waited for them to return.
The truck returned without the students, so we got in and
rejoined them at the stream, and then headed back to Baybay.
When we got to the hostel, I showered and then helped Dr.
Fernando process specimens until midnight. Several of the
students helped us, and they had brought rice, skewered barbecued
chicken, and Coke for our dinner. It was delicious.
November 4, Leyte Province,
Abuyog, Barangay Cagbolo to Barangay Katipunan, Abuyog-Silago road (new
construction)
Saturday was our last real collecting day of the trip. We got
a slow start in the morning, stopping by the restaurant at the port.
I thought we were going to eat there again that night because
someone said they were going to cook fish for us. After the
arrangements were made, we drove again along the twisty, bumpy road
that winds through the mountains between Baybay and Abuyog.
Abuyog is connected to Silago, in Southern Leyte province, by
a coastal road, but a new inland road is being constructed. I
think our main purpose was to look at lowland dipterocarp forest.
While Leyte is less developed than some other islands and has
some large areas of forest, road access is a curse for lowland forest.
Roads facilitate logging, slash-and-burn agriculture, and
village development. The new road proved to be no exception.
Even though the road was still dirt in places, with trucks
hauling gravel, concrete being laid in sections, and clouds of
billowing dust everywhere, the road had been there long enough so that
most of the large dipterocarps had already been logged. We
first stopped right at the boundary of Igni Village when Dr. Fernando
and Marlito started spotting dipterocarps - a few large trees left by
the logging. A large Shorea
palosapis
with a dbh of 103.2 cm stood in a cleared field. Down the
road a bit they found a Hopea
philippinensis and another species of Shorea, with pocket
type domatia in the vein axils below. Marlito spotted a
trail, so we all piled out of the truck and walked through a disturbed
lowland dipterocarp forest remnant to a kaingan plot. A
red-fruited species of Pandanus
was growing at the edge of the plot. The trail ended at the
plot, so we turned around and headed back to the road. I saw Medinilla
(Melastomataceae), dipterocarp seedlings, Anisopteris, more Sararanga
(Pandanaceae), gingers, Costus,
Schefflera
(Araliaceae), palms, and Fagraea
(Loganiaceae). And then I spotted two small saplings - Gomphandra!
As far as I can tell so far, the Gomphandra from
Abuyog is an
undescribed species. Only one species of Gomphandra was
previously reported from Leyte, and the pubescence of the Abuyog
specimens doesn't match the description of that species. Of
course, one really need reproductive material to confirm or write a
description, and at first all we found were saplings. Further
down the road in Barangay Imelda we stopped again and I found more Gomphandra in an
area that had obviously been cut over within the past few years.
After lunch we drove further and stopped to collect acorns
from a Lithocarpus
(Fagaceae) and to examine a large Syzygium
(Myrtaceae) that had been left standing at the edge of the road like a
sentinel. The truck then turned around and we explored a few
kaingan patches that were so recent the farmers were still burning the
trees. Marlito talked to one of the farmers, who was trying
to grow food for his family. He had planted bananas, cassava,
Alocasia,
and had seeded red upland rice in the dry, barren soil. In
between kaingan plots, we checked forest fragments for more Gomphandra but only
found more saplings.
Finally, in the last patch of forest along the road, just past the
marker set at the boundary of Barangays Imelda and Katipunan, we found
a mature Gomphandra.
At least, the tree was large enough to be mature, with a dbh
of 5.9 cm. However, it had no reproductive material.
I collected specimens anyway and convinced Marlito to dig up
a couple of small seedlings to plant at the Visca nursery. I
figured any Gomphandra
along the road had a limited life span, as all the forest will almost
certainly be converted to kaingan within 10 years. If LSU has
a male and a female tree, though, at least the species won't be
entirely lost. I have no idea what the distribution of the
Abuyog Gomphandra
is - it wasn't present in the forest in Baybay. Everyone else
had headed back to the truck, and I was poking around a bit more in the
forest, when I heard Dr. Fernando shout. He'd found two
fruiting specimens, right at the edge of the forest remnant!
Everyone was happy - it was a great way to end the last day
of our collecting trips. The students helped me collect
specimens and gather data on location and dbh. Dr. Fernando
and I took some great pictures of the infructescences, and Marlito is
keeping an eye on the trees to watch for ripe fruit.
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 Photo:
E. S. Fernando |
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 Photo:
E. S. Fernando |
We ended the day by processing specimens at the Institute of Tropical
Ecology office. While some of us changed newspapers and
pressed the fresh specimens, others cooked dinner in the kitchen.
If dinner had been planned for the port restaurant, plans
changed somewhere along the line. During dinner, Dr. Fernando
showed the photographs he'd taken with his digital camera. I
hadn't brought the USB cable for my camera, and Dr. Fernando's Canon
cable wouldn't work for my Olympus camera, so I promised to send a CD
with my pictures later so the Institute could have some of the habitat
shots I took.
November 5
November 5 was the last day of our trip, and it was the last collecting
day I had in November. I was packed and ready to go by 6:30
am, but it was a while longer before we were picked up from the hostel
- by the same truck we'd been in during the week. I switched
back to riding in the cab for the last journey over the mountains and
up to Tacloban. We checked in at the airport and dropped off
our bags before dashing back out and going to the restaurant that we'd
first eaten at when we arrived. It was lunch time and I
hadn't had anything to eat yet because we'd skipped breakfast.
I wasn't sure that our food would arrive before the plane
left, but we had about 7 minutes to scarf down shrimp, rice, and soup
before I told Dr. Fernando we absolutely had to return to the airport.
People were still climbing the steps to the plane when I got
out to the runway, but I think Dr. Fernando was the last person to
board the plane. The flight back was uneventful, and Marilyn
met us at the airport with a van. We headed to a few shopping
malls to get groceries for Dr. Fernando and then returned to Los
Baños.
Last updated: January
5,
2007
Photo:
E. S. Fernando
Photo:
E. S. Fernando
Photo:
E. S. Fernando
Photo:
E. S. Fernando
Photo:
E. S. Fernando
Photo:
E. S. Fernando
Photo:
E. S. Fernando
Photo:
E. S. Fernando
Photo:
E. S. Fernando