TREES ARE SANCTUARIES Requiem to a Heritage Acacia Tree (5 Articles)

  In observance of the International DAY OF THE FOREST (March 21, 2025) and EARTH Day (April 22, 2025)

 Trees are Sanctuaries 

Part 1 - Requiem to a Heritage Acacia Tree

Relics on Display at the Living with Nature Center

San Vicente, Ilocos Sur

Dr Abe V Rotor

“Trees are sanctuaries. Whoever knows how to speak to them, whoever knows how to listen to them, can learn the truth.” -  Herman Hesse

Relics of a century-old acacia (Samanea saman) in relief artwork by the author 2025

  

Details of relief painting, Requiem to a Heritage Acacia Tree, AVR 

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The International Day of Forests, also known as World Forestry Day, was established by the United Nations General Assembly in 2012 and is celebrated annually on March 21st. The day aims to raise awareness about the importance of forests and trees, and to promote their conservation and sustainable management. The theme for the International Day of Forests in 2025 is "Forests and Foods".

The theme for Earth Day 2025 is OUR POWER, OUR PLANET, inviting everyone around the globe to unite behind renewable energy, and to triple the global generation of clean electricity by 2030. How? By joining us in Earth Action Day, encouraging all to take action—educate, advocate, and mobilize. Pledge an Earth Action on social media. Attend/plan/register a local event. Integrate Earth Day lessons into your curricula. Donate to support our efforts. Below you’ll find resources (plus quizzes, fact sheets, articles and more) to help you take action this Earth Day, April 22nd, and every day.

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Part 2 - I sing the dirge of the Narra and Acacia

Former title: Heritage Tree Remembered

 Wood shards from a heritage tree against a forest 

background AV Rotor (16” x 24.5”) 2023

I sing the dirge of the Narra and Acacia,

     heritage trees our children shall miss

at the verge of extinction like Sequoia;

     save some epitaphs and memories.

If only art can take over their absence,

     in monuments and legends they live,

but where is sanctity, what is reverence,

     what can man to his Creator give?

 

Part 3 - A Cross in the Sky 

Dr Abe V Rotor 

Skeleton of an acacia tree, QC

I have lost you forever,

now a silhouette in the sky,

spreading a gospel to remember

for the mindless passerby.

You lived half of your life,

yet fullest at the Throne;

earning it well with strife, 

where every seed is grown.

The birds now a flock, 

the child a man; 

you bid them all the luck,

and now you are gone.

In youth you sheltered me,

a thought I can't be free,

I atone for your brevity, 

with a thousand-and-one tree.~

Part 4 - Hanging Garden

Dr Abe V Rotor

Lianas make a flimsy veil on the trunk and limbs of an acacia tree. La Union Botanical Garden, Cadaclan, San Fernando LU. On-the-spot painting by the author. 

Where have all the flowers gone?

Gone with the passing clouds in the sky

Casting a shadow of death, then fly,

Leaving but a scorching sun.

Where have all the flowers gone?

Gone with every tear the heavens cry

On tired branches and empty ground

Where angels pass by.

Where have all the flowers gone?

Gone with the dryads now away…

Gone are the shower and bouquet

That make a beautiful day.

Part 5 - Let Us Save the Heritage Acacia* Trees

Along the Highway

“Trees give peace to the souls of men.” - Nora Waln

Photos taken from a moving car by Dr Abe V Rotor

March 24, 2023

"I came from Paradise Lost."

Adapted from Dead Tree Walking, AVR

Dr Abe V Rotor

 

"Now senile, their limbs are bare, their crowns empty."  

“It is not so much for its beauty that the forest makes a claim upon men’s hearts, as for that subtle something, that quality of air that emanation from old trees, that so wonderfully changes and renews a weary spirit.” ― Robert Louis Stevenson

"A living skeleton standing and about to fall.  Timber!" 

“For in the true nature of things, if we rightly consider, every green tree is far more glorious than if it were made of gold and silver.” — Martin Luther

 

"Move over trees; we need highways, sidewalks and buildings." 

"The tree is more than first a seed, then a stem, then a living trunk, and then dead timber. The tree is a slow, enduring force straining to win the sky.”― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, author of The Little Prince

 

"Living towers, lonely and forgotten." 

“Trees are poems that the earth writes upon the sky.”— Kahlil Gibran

 

"Living towers. These trees are leaning dangerously over the highway, having lost their main limbs to give way to power and communication lines."

 

"Grotesque and fearsome, this tree warns of danger to passersby." 

 

“A tree is our most intimate contact with nature.” ― George Nakashima

      

"Park at your own risk, but this is not the message.  

These trees are harmless, in fact benevolent to all." 

 

“Never say there is nothing beautiful in the world anymore. There is always something to make you wonder in the shape of a tree, the trembling of a leaf.” ― Albert Schweitzer

 

"Juvenile acacia trees - will they ever become heritage trees?

“The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness.” ― John Muir

Acacia - Samanea saman (Jacq.) Merr.) - known commonly as Rain Tree, Pukul Lima, Cow Tamarind, Hujan-Hujan, East Indian Walnut, Monkey-pod, Saman. mimosa, acacia, thorntree or wattle, is a polyphyletic genus of shrubs and trees belonging to the subfamily Mimosoideae of the family Fabaceae (Leguminosae). It was described by the Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus in 1773 based on the African species Acacia nilotica. 

Samanea saman, also known as Rain Tree, is a tree, up 30 m tall. It is widely cultivated in Southeast Asia, especially Singapore, for its iconic umbrella-shaped crown which provides plenty of shade. The leaflets fold up during overcast days and in the early evening, therefore it is also known as Pukul Lima, which means ‘five o clock’ in Malay.
 

The acacia tree is believed to be around for over 20 million years as scientists have found fossilized charcoal deposits which seem to have acacia trees preserved in them.

(Internet)

“If you would know strength and patience, welcome the company of trees.” 

― Hal Borland

“To be without trees would, in the most literal way, to be without our roots.”

― Richard Mabey

“Anyone who thinks fallen leaves are dead has never watched them dancing

 on a windy day.”― Shira Tamir

  

Amazing features of the Acacia (From the Internet)

“Acts of creation are ordinarily reserved for gods and poets, but humbler folk may circumvent this restriction if they know how. To plant a pine, for example, one need be neither god nor poet; one need only own a shovel.” ― Aldo Leopold

“That each day I may walk unceasingly on the banks of my water, that my soul may repose on the branches of the trees which I planted, that I may refresh myself under the shadow of my sycamore.” – Egyptian tomb inscription

“He who plants a tree, plants a hope.”― Lucy Larcom ~

Acknowledgement: Quotations from the Internet