Today will be the culmination of the weeklong Balacat Festival in my beloved Mabalacat City. For the first time in many years, the focus of celebration will be on the Balacat tree (Zizyphus talanai). Our city got its name from this this tree which is endemic to the Philippines. Ma-balacat means full of balacat. There were many balacat trees before in this part of Pampanga.
In 2007, I conceptualized a project to propagate the balacat tree and do an information campaign to spread awareness about it. I thought that as an environmentalist, this would be my legacy to my hometown. There were only a few old trees left back then. Many Mabalaqueños don’t even know what a balacat tree looks like. I once asked a public school teacher if she has seen a balacat tree. She was unaware that we were standing right under it.
I sought the help of friends in the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) Region 3 office for the project. The first thing we did was to get as much information as we could about the balacat tree. We went to the Ecosystems Research and Development Bureau (ERDB), the DENR research arm, in Los Baños, Laguna, and visited the UP Botanical Garden.
Through this column, I asked for any information about old balacat trees in the city. Luckily, a cabalen from Barangay Mamatitang responded. She said there is an old balacat tree inside the Mabalacat Institute (MI). Together with DENR officials and staff, we wasted no time in going there and took samples of the leaves and flowers and sent them to the ERDB in Los Baños for study. It was later confirmed that the samples we sent were from a balacat tree.
From the tree in MI, we produced the first 500 seedlings using funds and manpower from the DENR. We also retrieved wildings (seedlings that grew from fallen seeds), one of which I planted inside our company compound. To institutionalize the project, our foundation signed an agreement with the Municipal Government of Mabalacat and the DENR.
After the first 500 seedlings, I started my own nursery and produced thousands of seedlings. Volunteers from the Kabalacat Movement, a group I organized, planted balacat trees in all public schools in Mabalacat. Many of the seedlings survived and are now full-grown trees. Some barangays also planted balacat trees along their roads, like Sta. Maria and Mawaque. Clusters of Balacat trees can be seen at the church patio and open space of Mawaque Parish Church and at the Madapdap Resettlement Park. There are also a few trees scattered around the Mabalacat City Hall area in Xevera, Tabun.
I also gave seedlings to private corporations like the NLEX. There are now balacat trees in the entire stretch of the NLEX-SCTEX connector road in Mabiga and in the center islands. Sadly, some of the trees were earth-balled when the exit was widened and did not survive. There are also balacat trees near the SCTEX Clark North exit and the SCTEX Dolores exit. I also gave seedlings to the Yokohama Tire Corporation in Clark for their Forever Forest project inside their compound.
As part of the information campaign, we produced notebooks made from recycled paper with the cover providing information about the balacat tree. Today, those notebooks are still being distributed every year during school opening.
To institutionalize the conservation of the Balacat tree, it was declared as the city tree in the Environmental Code of Mabalacat City which I authored during my second term as Councilor. The balacat is to be propagated and protected in accordance with existing laws.
Today, 25 years after, it gives me great happiness to see the mighty balacat tree reigning once more in my beloved city. As they say, if you want to leave a legacy, write a book, father a child or plant a tree – a balacat, at that.