Celebrating Botanical Art Worldwide 2025, ANI: Our Assets, Natural Heritage, and Cultural Identity is an exhibition by the National Museum of the Philippines (Museum of Natural History, Gallery XII, 2F) and the Philippine Botanical Art Society until November 2025.
It features some 78 artworks made by over 50 of the botanical society and wall displays related to Philippine food plants such as leafy vegetables, tubers and root crops, pods and beans, gourds, fruits, grasses, and wild edible plants. In fact, the Philippines holds 5% of the world’s flora.
Different roots on the same land
A visual map shows the diversity of food plants in the country led by the Filipino staple food —rice, from a bunch of green grass to brown palay stalks, to grains of rice.
Some of our food plants come from the Americas, Asia, Africa, and Europe, classified as Native such as mabolo, santol, or batwan; Introduced, intentionally or inadvertently brought to a new area such as bawang, sibuyas, palay, camote; and Naturalized, introduced into new areas and established “self-sustaining populations without further human intervention,” such as ube, saba, kape, and balili, a kind of aquatic grass.
Age of discovery
The highly-informative exhibition includes sections on the history of botanical exploration in the country from the 17th to the 21st centuries.
In 1688, Georg Joseph Kamel, a Jesuit missionary started the first pharmacy in Manila and wrote the first reports on the wealth of Philippine flora and fauna; in 1836, American collector Hugh Cumming’s thousands of plants from Philippine forests became the knowledge base of Philippine botany in the 20th century; Spanish botanist Manel Blanco published in 1837 the well-known Flora de Filipinas.
In 1902, American botanist Elmer Merrill established the Philippine National Herbarium, now housed in the National Museum. The bombing of Manila in 1945 destroyed totally the collection. In 1947, Filipino botanist Eduardo Quisumbing started building up the herbarium collection again, as well as mentoring the next generation of botanists.
Sowing our daily living
In our daily lives, we use plant products in the form of fibers, dyes, and handicrafts, as seen in the display of six dried plant specimens, namely buri, lasa, rattan, abaca, noni, and nito. Likewise, plant for food, medicine, and raw materials have become part of our identity.
Abaca plants are the source of fiber known as Manila hemp valued for its strength, flexibility, and durability. Traditional attires made of woven abaca remain an expression of our culture and heritage. A member of the palm family, rattan is a valuable resource for non-timber resource products like furniture and handicrafts. The Philippines is a producer and exporter of rattan products.
Noni is a source of natural reddish-brown dyes. Nito is a climbing fern used in making handicrafts such as hats, plates, and baskets.
Buri palm is the third most important plant in the country after coconut and nipa. It is the source of buri, raffia, and buntal fibers in handicrafts. Lasa is a type of grass used for making soft brooms. Brooms made of lasa are more durable than those made of tambo, another grass.
Preserve the past/Protect the future
A fun interactive panel is set up where one can try drawing some plants on digital tablets or drawing with pencil and paper.
At the other side, a display cabinet shows the basic tools of preserving botanical specimens: an album of dried leaves, pencils for sketching, watercolor and acrylic tubes, paint brushes, and sketchbooks.
A visual feast
Framed in white and glass, the botanical artworks are done mostly in watercolor on paper, acrylic on canvas, pen-and-ink, and colored pencil. Each one is labeled with its local name, species and family, habitat, and its use as food.
Aside from works hung on walls, acrylic display stands in the gallery center have back-to-back paintings at eye level, allowing for a closer look of each work.
The floor-to-ceiling arched windows are covered in white screen with a single plant printed and blown up in medium gray silhouettes, adding to a total visual feast. It complements the botanical artworks that are mostly colored.
Biodiversity crisis
Global wildlife population have decreased drastically by an average of 73% in 50 years (1970-2020), according to the World Wildlife Fund and the Zoological Society of London’s Living Planet report of 2024. Latin America and the Caribbean recorded the steepest decline with 95%, Africa with 76%, and Asia and the Pacific at 60%.
Humans are responsible for biodiversity loss among all species across the planet, based on global analysis of 2000 studies, reports The Guardian (March 2025), citing five factors: habitat change, direct exploitation of resources, climate change, invasive species, and pollution.
The biodiversity crisis is not just about other species; we also depend on the natural world for food, clean water and air to breathe.
No time to waste
While the Philippines is one of the 17 megadiverse countries in the world, it is also one of the world’s hotspots for devastating biodiversity loss. The Philippine rate of deforestation is among the highest in the world, with only 1.75 million acres of virgin forests remaining today.
Is it too late?
