CSSPI COUNTRY FAIR & EXHIBIT 2012

    This year’s Cacti & Succulent Society of the Philippines, Inc. (CSSPI) Exhibit is unique in that it has purely cacti and succulent exhibits and only King Louis Garden Corp. exhibited an ornamental landscape design with Christmas as its theme complete with gigantic stars and reindeers made of local plant twigs with poinsettias in various colours and their other temperate annuals as accents.

       There are also vertical gardens this year which were mainly planted with Tillandsias, Cryptanthus, Dischidias, and other epiphytic succulents. 

       Adoracion Sangle Bernabe, CSSPI incumbent president has her own landscape exhibit featuring some of the rarest and most expensive of cacti: the genus Ariocarpus. 

       The table exhibit this year is filled with big cacti & succulents compared to a “competition of cuteness” last CSSPI Exhibit 2009.  For me the most striking among the plants in the table exhibit is the blood red Schlumbergera with fruits.  It is a delightful contrast to the greens around.  There is only one Hoya entry-a floriferous Hoya retusa.  This Hoya is not a native of the Philippines.  There is also one Lithops entry-a very bold venture! And even a rare Uebelmannia pseudopectinifera is showcased! 

       I later learned that Lily Ann Tan has a table completely filled up by her cactus and succulent collection alone but unfortunately she could not enter these plants for competition as she is one of the judges.  Nevertheless she has done the general public a great favour in getting their attention to the different succulent forms that exist on earth!

       The Queen of Philippine Movies, Ms. Susan Roces, now also called the Dragon Fruit Queen because of her highly successfully Dragon Fruit (Hylocereus undatus) cultivation came early.  She was introduced to the various cacti and succulent species by no less than Serapion Metilla, CSSPI’s founding father.  Ms. Susan Roces listened attentively to the latter and went to see all the showcased plants taking particular attention to Lophophoras when she was told that these plants were hallucinogenic.  It took her some three minutes or so before she can get over her amazement of those “peyotes”.  Later, she was given a honourary Cacti & Succulent Society of the Philippines, Inc. membership.

       Vice Mayor Joy Belmonte is the primary honour guest and she happily co-mingled with everyone and I personally heard her as she asked the other honoured guests how long have they been growing cacti and succulents or how did they fell in love with these group of plants.  She recounted how she was ordered by her brother Kevin Belmonte, our beloved CSSPI chairman, before when she was studying in London to go to a remote town just to buy an expensive succulent that’s just the size of an inch of her pinkie and later loosing it as the hotel chambermaid mistook it for some rubbish which she and their father, now Speaker of the House Sonny Belmonte, searched in vain and fortunately recovered it! It was a Haworthia…

       Chairman Kevin also recounted how he started with his cacti and succulent collection by buying a very fine species of a Gymnocalycium for Php 80.00 during the 1980’s (already a very expensive amount during those times) from Serapion Metilla leaving the schoolboy Kevin with just Php 20.00 in his pocket.  But had he given more weigh to the exorbitant price, he won’t have known the joy of collecting this group of plants I postulate.

       Bettina Osmeña, wife of former Senator Serge Osmeña, also briefly discussed about the wonders of Aloe barbadensis aka Aloe Vera.  The most salient point of the several things she said is that Aloe barbadensis when made into a juice or something edible and once it enters the body has the ability to seek out the ailments and weak spots of the body and cure or repair it!

       Most of the trophies were taken by only three individuals: Lino Rom, Aireen Bernal, and Becky Buenaventura.  Best Friend Aireen took the six major awards: Best in Show, Best Succulent, and Best Sansevieria all won by her Sansevieria bonsel which was grown superbly by her father in their sunny and hot Tarlac home; Best Cactaceae and Best Cactus by her Uebelmannia pseudopectinifera, and Best Succulent Others by her Lithops.

       The commercial area was also bigger with more booth sellers besting the Philippine Orchid Show 2012 astronomically!  There is also a wider variety of things that could be bought since this year’s exhibit is a Country Fair too!  There are food sellers of which the mushroom burger is highly commendable for their healthy products, the booth selling red bananas which they claim has a lot of medicinal properties, a booth selling clothes and accessories, AANI selling several agricultural stuff and having their own daily series of seminars, some garden tools’ booths with one who even fooled me that their cactus and succulent landscape is made of the real plants but later upon closer inspection I found out that they are artificial plants!  Yet the landscaping was so great and another highly commendable feature of the 2012 CSSPI Exhibit.

       Ana Ruth Purificacion-Conde told us that Hoyas are also the latest craze among the plant lovers and plant collectors of Poland when she went to a plant show in Germany and the Poles competed among themselves to buy the Hoyas being sold.

       A group of art students painted the cacti or succulent of their choice during the second day of the show and the best ones got cash prizes.

       Some animals were also for sale during the show such as pot-bellied pigs, wild Philippine piglets, Canada geese, wild Philippine chicken, goats, guinea fowls, etc.

       To complete the variety of the country fair, there are also booths selling medicinal herbs, lotion, ointments, medicines; stalls selling regional foods; and stalls selling heirloom rice.

       Kudos to the Cacti & Succulent Society of the Philippines, Inc. everyone in the group including active and non-active, paid and unpaid yet members have contributed to the success of this year’s show in their own humble ways!!!  May this success be achieved once again in the next CSSPI Exhibit as the group only stages such exhibits once every three years.