Pinto Art Museum Arboretum
The art galleries of Pinto Art Museum alone are a worthwhile visit. With 7 galleries, it takes a day or two to absorb most of the art pieces. Add another day if you take lots of selfies, or stay too long at the museum’s Cafe Rizal, talking about art over Vigan longganisa pizza and tamarind shakes.
Add to this a sort of “outdoor” gallery, where the art is a collaboration between artist and nature: the Pinto Arboretum (an arboretum is a collection or garden of trees). The Pinto Arboretum displays a special kind of tree for those who enter the forest: trees native to the Philippines.
Why “native” trees?
The Philippines is now down to about 24% forest cover, which is down from an initial 75% during the 1900s. Unfortunately any attempts to replant or bring back its forests usually involved trees that never even existed here. Planting these “exotic” trees created forests with little to no biodiversity, as noticed in the “man-made” forests of Bohol.
Unlike native trees, exotic trees give little to no contribution to local ecosystems since they did not evolve there. Oftentimes they can be harmful to an ecosystem, as is the case with exotic mahogany trees planted in the Philippines.
This plus the depletion of Indigenous knowledge on the medicinal and cultural value of native plant species, has contributed to both the loss of our forests and our understanding of their importance. Forest loss is problematic, especially when they’re needed to bring us water as they do in forested watersheds, or to absorb carbon in this age of climate change.
Education and Tree-via
This is where folks like Ronald Achacoso, conservationist and trustee member of the Philippine Native Plants Conservation Society, Inc, comes in. It was he who “designed” and “curated” the collection of native tree and plant species inside the Pinto Arboretum. Coincidentally, he is also a painter, and he shared with us why it was fitting that the Pinto Art Museum should also have an arboretum.
“I actually see this also as an artwork… take for example photosynthesis, napaka-magical sya… it’s like solidified sunlight… so everything you see here is an expression of sunlight…”
Ronald Achacoso
Some of the native species of the Pinto Arboretum
If this forest of art is an expression of light, there are also specific species that express beauty in many other ways. I’d like to share with you a few of them.
Kaningag (Cinnamomum cebuense)
The Kaningag is a cinnamon tree that’s endemic to Cebu, which was memorialized in its scientific name, Cinnamomum cebuense. By simply pinching a piece of one of its leaves, you can smell the cinnamon. Sir. Ronald found a freshly-fallen branch on the floor and gave us a leaf or two to hold and smell.
A Philippine “four-leaf clover”?
You might be familiar with four-leaf clovers being lucky charms, but we have our own charm that not only has four leaves, but is edible and good for you too. Apat-apat is actually not a clover, but an aquatic fern: it lives in the water!
It’s mostly enjoyed in the Visayas, and grows in rice paddies and moist soil. It can be harvested once a week, and surprisingly is a good source of protein 1.
Pitcher plant
I’ve never seen a live pitcher plant leaf in real life. Unfortunately I still haven’t: the pitcher plant leaf was dead and dry. I was probably a few days too late!
Pitcher plants use this special leaf that has a part shaped like a cup, or “pitcher”, with a narrow opening on top. Insects and even small animals fall into it and are slowly dissolved by the plant for nutrients.
Pagong-pagong
Sir. Ronald then introduced us to a plant with curious-looking leaves that seemed to stick on many of the trees. They look like small turtle shells, hence one of its local names, Pagong-pagong or “turtle-turtle” in Tagalog. In an attempt to identify the specific species using only the internet, I assume it could be Pyrrosia piloselloides, also known as “Dragon’s scale” 2.
Begonias
Begonia is a large genus of flowering plants, with over 1,800 known species globally. There are 133 Begonia species in the Philippines with 20 of them unique to a single island: Palawan 3.
The arboretum has different kinds of Begonia species. One of my favorites was one with heart-shaped flowers and red stems. Unfortunately, like many Philippine native plants, Begonias are popular in the illegal plant trade.
The Vertical Garden
I won’t be sharing here all the species that we saw because you should check them out yourself. But there is one part of the arboretum that absolutely blew my mind.
We’ve all seen a vertical garden before; almost every elementary school has one. They’re usually made up of a wall or fence of some sort, draped with recycled plastic bottles filled with soil and all sorts of vegetables and herbs. A quick search of “vertical garden” will show you what we typically think of, or have come to know.
The Vertical Garden of the Pinto Arboretum however is not your typical school yard fence of basil or spider plant. Sir. Ronald “curated” it by choosing all sorts of native plants, particularly those found on cliffs and crevices known as Cremnophytes.
Along the bottom of the wall were more native plants such as Schefflera palawanensis, and ferns whose spores could be easily seen under the leaves.
Will art imitate life?
The art world can be a superficial, cut-throat place. Millions are spent buying and selling art pieces that oftentimes makes no visual sense to me. Meanwhile there are talented artists scrounging for income to feed their families.
But art can indeed be beautiful, and affordable. You can buy art from a local artist with a unique perspective on a postcard, or even make your own with a mobile app on your phone. However the easiest way to enjoy art, is to enjoy the art outside. And unlike art pieces in a gallery, nature’s life forms do not offer the perspective or talent of a single painter. They offer cures to disease, give spice to our food, and bring life to our dull dwellings. Or as Sir. Ronald put it, they offer expressions of sunlight.
All of this to me makes the Philippines’ unique forests and life forms far more valuable than any piece of art being sold on the market. All I ask is that we simply protect it.
Visit Pinto Art Museum
The Pinto Art Museum is open Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, 10am to 6pm.
Prices for art museum admission (as of June 2021)
- PHP 250 for regular ticket
- PHP 200 for senior citizens and PWD with valid IDs
- PHP 125 for children and students with proper school IDs
- Café Rizal by Peppermill is open from 1030am to 6pm.
- Call 633-0329 for reservations.
The Pinto Arboretum was open by appointment, but as of the writing of this blog post, they stopped accepting appointments for some reason. Contact them on their facebook page here if you’re interested in checking it out. Well worth the trip to Antipolo.
My video on Pinto Art Museum & Arboretum
Soundbites of the Pinto Arboretum tour
You can even listen to some of the trivia Sir. Ronald shared with us in a podcast. “Native Trees of Pinto Arboretum” is the 14th episode of Tanum Tuesdays, a podcast on plants. Listen now on Spotify or Anchor.
References & notes
- VB Amoroso, et al., 2017. Bringing back the lost value of Philippine edible ferns: their antioxidant, proteins, and utilization. International Journal of Advanced Research (IJAR)/ https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/BRINGING-BACK-THE-LOST-VALUE-OF-PHILIPPINE-EDIBLE-Amoroso-Mendez/855916abdd1f4601891fbd2e2efdb3b7fac7610e
- NE Morales, 2018. Pteridophytes and Lycophytes Assessment in the University of Mindanao, Matina Campus, Davao City Philippines. Univ. of Min. Intl. Mult. Disc. Res. Jour. Vol. 3, Issue 1, Dec. 2018. https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Pteridophytes-and-Lycophytes-Assessment-in-the-of-Morales/6561f46b8a6cee45172a09454f3ff80e5ff6fdc7
- KA Fabro, 2020. Illegal plant trade, tourism threaten new Philippine flowering herbs. Mongabay.com. https://news.mongabay.com/2020/08/illegal-plant-trade-tourism-threaten-new-philippine-flowering-herbs/
- Pinto by the way is pronounced pintô, which means door in Tagalog (thank you to my fiance for pointing this out to me).