Native wild edible : Ficus pseudopalma

Native wild edibles, Our Blogs, What we grow

Dec 012013

In 2008 I went to a fruit nursery in Angeles City, Pampanga to purchase a few seedlings of Philippine native fruit trees and met there for the first time Verman “Berns” Reyes; the nursery owner and also the lone founding member of the merry group the “Rare Fruit Society of the Philippines” or what is always called “RFSP”. Asking for membership through Yahoogroup ([email protected]) was easy as a breeze and so in time I became a “Rarefruiter” (a moniker for every member) myself. RFSP now hosts thousands of members from different trades and professional backgrounds and still dozens get membered at RFSP’s Yahoogroup or Facebook page everyday. Anyway, on that first meeting, Berns gave me a lot of freebies and among those were half-germinated Lipote (Syzygium curranii) seeds and Niyog-niyogan (Ficus pseudopalma) seeds. Fast tracked to June 2011 and finally it was his turn, with fellow rarefruiters TJ Gonzalez, Boy Gonzalez and J.A. Aguirre, to visit the farm for some native fruit hunting and sight-seeing. Whenever we have visitors, I usually ask them to plant whatever native tree seedlings we have at the nursery to make the event meaningful and in line with our advocacy. At the time, it was the Niyog-niyogan seedlings that I had them out-plant.

Niyog-niyogan is a culturally important food source especially in the Bicol region of the Philippines where its young leaves are usually cooked with fish, chillies and the ubiquitous coconut milk.

Specimen : Cultivated