Looking Back: From Palmeras to Pothos -- A history of fickleness in local choices of ornamental plants

The world of gardening is just like the world of fashion: taste and preferences come and go.

In the '70s, when we were living in the center of town, my mother’s plant collection was typical of the neighborhood. She had the usual pampasuerte or ‘lucky plants’ on the second floor terrace – palmeras and la suertes all neatly lined up in clay planters, evergeen and totally low-maintenance, which was perfect because she was a busy housewife tending a store.

Later on, when our family moved to the edge of the town proper, competing for her attention while puttering around were the so-called San Francisco shrubs lined up to flaunt their amazingly variegated beauty. She also had creepers called manaog ka sa ilog, water plant, and cadena de amor. If only those plants could "sashay down the catwalk," as fashion journalists would put it, for each was beautiful in its own right.

The neighbors, of course, had the same, plus an impressive variety of gumamelas and santans. There were red, yellow, orange, and sometimes, pink and white varieties of gumamela, plus single or double-petaled ones besides, while there were red, crimson, yellow, orange, and sometimes, pink santans.

In the latter part of the decade, parading and preening at the front yard of townsfolk were zinnias, bachelor’s button, bandera hispaniolas, marigold, chichirica, miniature Chinese bamboo…

Come March, during school graduations, imported botanicals would arrive in town, although only as disembodied flowers and leaves. The preferred flower tucked on shirt lapels was dahlia on a bed of baby’s breath or fragrant cypress leaves. Others would wear a garland of everlasting flowers. I know at least one neighbor who successfully grew one lone dahlia plant, but in general, this flower and the others came all the way from Baguio City. 

Then as now, Valentine’s Day was the same affair of red roses. Roses are difficult to grow, but there were those with the proverbial green thumb, who managed to have a collection right on their front lawn -- red, pink, white, miniature varieties. I've always wondered what their secret was.

Since we're at it, the preferred flowers for the dead were the kalachuchi and palong-palong, which one could pick from somebody's yard.

In the public plaza, there were cypress trees and clumps of flowering kantutay, locally called bangbangsit (Ilocano word for stinky), but whose florets come in various colors per head. In the time of Mayor Leo de Vera, Councilor Gerry de Vera ordered the planting of the bayambang or culibangbang tree from which the town got its name, but sadly it is no longer in sight around the vicinity of the town proper even when this single species is at the heart of its identity. Another culibangbang tree species, however, with its pink orchid-like blooms, could be easily found growing wild in the barrios like Bani, but this variety is said to be an introduced species. (Bayambang, though, used to be called Malunguey or Balunguey, but its meaning remains a mystery.) Fire trees and yellow candle trees gave sprays of bold colors, making even the dullest corners bright and look special. 

Towards the '80s, there came a time when everyone seemed to be into Vietnam rose, to the detriment of old favorites, as though they turned ugly in the eyes of their masters overnight.

Then there was a time when Doña Aurora plants were all the rage. 

The moneyed ones also had stuff brought in from Baguio: yellow candle and other species I could not name at the moment.

In the ‘90s, one wondered why, but suddenly there were tinik ni Kristo everywhere one looked. 

There were already other succulents then aside from these novel prickly flowering species, which of course came in varieties as well: little cactus varieties and giant cacti with pricks so big they were covered with whole eggshells maybe as décor or maybe to prevent injury. Katakataka (kalanchoe) was also popular. But no one bothered about the scientific names of these species yet, except perhaps the biology students.

The hard-core gardeners tended orchids.

Then the desert rose and the ZZ plant came, and everyone seemed to have followed suit after someone introduced these. Both plants were quite indestructible and required no tender love and care from their owners.

How each plant became popular – and how it waned on the radar – are wrapped in mystery. Today, there are some plants that are altogether missing from the garden, as though they have been discarded like yesterday's outmoded clothing: sampaguita, camia, rosal, dama de noche, ylang ylang, adelfa, bangka-bangkaan, to name just a few. 

In this day and age of plantitos and plantitas, the most popular appear to be the once-ignored senseverias or snake plant varieties and the pothos varieties because they reportedly clear the air of toxins. There is, of course, a host of new cactus species, with eye-popping geometric designs, the aglaonema 'series', and a host of exotics we’ve never seen before, with curious 'accents' and  'accessories' as appendages. Today, the San Francisco shrubs are now referred to as crotons. 

Oscar Wilde defined fashion – with his usual overdose of sarcasm – as "a never-ending parade of ugliness." On the other hand, gardening, we could say in all seriousness, is a never-ending parade of pulchritude. In these cloistered times when people find solace in restoring pockets of the Eden that was suddenly snatched away by the pandemic, there's no telling which bevy of beauties will turn out to be the next flavor of the month, or apple of the eye, of local gardeners. 

With the endless variety of 'materials,' color, size, shape, geometry, and 'architecture,' the gardener is constantly bombarded with beauty in all its splendor: original, inventive, creative. The seemingly trivial gardening hobby then emerges as something else: it speaks of an unseen fashion show director that has a great design and 'fashion sense,' unfailingly dazzling in his surprises, or to steal from the stylish novelist Umberto Eco himself, a marvelous "capacity for invention."