Sabutan

Last week, I went to a museum to look at copies of old photographs taken in the Philippines during the late 1800's and early 1900's.

One photo that stuck to my mind was of a Filipino man dressed in fine Western clothes beside a tall stand of bush leaves which I thought at first were sugarcane leaves or overgrown pandan leaves. The caption indicated that the photo was taken in October 1911 somewhere in Tanay, Rizal and the man was standing beside Pandanus sabotan.

I was familiar with sabutan (Pandanus sabotan Blanco) as a raw material for hats, placemats, handbags, mats, baskets and other export items.

I also knew that sabutan is now becoming rare and endangered because of planting of coffee and citrus in its native habitat in Aurora Province (once a part of Quezon Province) and over-harvesting of its fine-textured leaves for the export items. I recall reading somewhere that agriculture researchers are trying to develop technologies to mass-propagate sabutan.

I hope they succeed soon, otherwise only old photographs like the one I saw in that museum may be all that will remain of the once-plentiful sabutan.