MAN has always looked to the forest for food and thought. But we, the modern men, know so little about our trees and woods.
Perhaps because we no longer build houses like the kampung folk did. They knew their timber like their family tree: cenggal, meranti, merbau and jati. In the words of architect Mohd Kamaludin Adam, the best Malay traditional houses today are “museum pieces”.
Those which still stand, wobbly though they may be, speak in muted voices of a once glorious age. Kamaludin knows his timber: he built an award-winning semi-traditional home — Puri Ibu — for his mother.
Kamaludin advances a few reasons for the sad fate that has befallen the beloved tradition of old. One, the kampung was just a walk away from the woods where the timber grew free and wild.
All they needed to do was cut a tree or two to build a house. Today, urbanisation has distanced us from our trees.
Two, traditional housebuilders were aplenty then. Many homeowners were masterbuilders themselves. Three, cost was minimal. Land was free and so was the timber.
If a cost estimate is needed for today, consider Kamaludin’s computation. Barring locational complications, a minimalist bungalow lot — 6,000 sq ft — will set you off by RM350,000 to RM450,000.
Throw in material, mastercraftmanship and manpower into the building broth, you end up with anything between RM1.6 million and RM2 million. But this needs saying: the aesthetics of teak is priceless.
Our mango state, harum manis Perlis, offers us a way out: teak attraction. Tectona grandis! These Latin speakers do know their teak: the hardwood trees can grow up to a grand height of 50m. And Perlis knows its teak, too. According to Perlis Forestry Department director Ag Shafie Ag Ahmadni, the state has lined 52 of its roads mostly with teak trees.
Save for some other species, there are 35,166 of them. Arbophilia is not something new to Perlis. It has been planting teak since 1953 in tree plantations across the state.
Today, there are 600ha of them.
Happily, arbophilia isn’t just a Perlis pasttime. In Perak — in Taiping, especially — rain trees, in their aesthetically aged ways, hug the roads and lanes, waiting impatiently to tell travellers what they have been a witness to. Other tree-loving states have similar stories.
PLUS Expressway Bhd, too, has been on the teak road for some time now. Notwithstanding all these trees, we seem to lack knowledge of silviculture.
Perhaps those of us who have the land may want to plant a teak or two and watch them grow. An investment in our own compound isn’t a bad idea at all.
Being arborist is good, too. After all, a tree would need a tree surgeon.
The newspapers — especially the print — are seen as pulp users, though we have gone digital in a very big way. That is a long way from pulp.
But we are as big on afforestation, too. The idea is, as The Brain Bank North West site puts it: “as many trees as possible, wherever possible”.
For an arbophilia — we are one — nothing beats seeing trees dance teak to teak. A verdant view, you may say.