The Philippines is blessed with a very high biodiversity, including the plants living in its remaining forest cover. Trees alone comprise about 3500 species. Just to research on a species a day would take about 10 years to finish all of just the trees. Then there are still the shrubs, herbs, ferns etc. Through this blog we hope to introduce you to some important plants in the forest before they completely disappear because of habitat destruction.
Saturday, June 11, 2011
The Biggest Dao!
Ron sizing up the dao
Have you ever seen a dao this big? I have seen young dao trees and much older ones in Daranak falls, UPLB and in Sorsogon. But to date the one standing in Biak na Bato National Park is the biggest I have seen so far. I can't even get a picture of the whole tree. It has a very large buttress base appearing like a massive wall. It definitely dwarfed all of my companions who tried to get close to it.
Dao is Dracontomelon dao which is a forest tree that forms huge buttress roots to support its humongous size and thick canopy. It is a member of the family Anacardiaceae, which makes it related to the cashew and mango. I hope this tree will live on for many more years and many-many more generations to come.