San Vicente Botanical Garden Series 6: The Red Leaf

Trees for Peace

  The Red Leaf 

   Dr Abe V Rotor 

               

Leaf of Talisay (Terminalia catappa) turns red, and soon falls off.  Deciduous trees lose their entire crown in autumn (cool months in the tropic), standing bare for some time, then rejuvenate into new and fuller foliage in the shape of an umbrella, from which the talisay  got its name, umbrella tree. (Photos by the author of a talisay sapling growing on a roadside close to the San Vicente Botanical Garden, San Vicente, Ilocos Sur)

I waited long for a red leaf to fall,

     but it held on until dusk;

I imagined the flag of Karl Marx, 

     flying high on a mast;

I looked for the sapling's mother,

     a tree stump greeted me;

I turned to the red leaf, now redder 

     with anger, pathos and plea. ~

"The one red leaf, the last of its clan,

  That dances as often as dance it can,

  Hanging so light, and hanging so high,

  On the topmost twig that looks up at the sky."

                                - Samuel Taylor Coleridge