Beyond the flame trees

By Vincent Akimoto

This June, Nature has unleashed a breath-takingly mesmerizing exhibition of red, orange and yellow flowers upon our beloved Royal Poinciana or Flame Trees that has tree-lovers all over Guam hugging themselves with bedazzled glee.

This year’s unexpectedly exuberant fiesta of gorgeous blooming Flame Trees is especially spectacular given the ferocious damage that was just recently wrought by Super Typhoon Sinlaku in April.

Like gigantic blazing red umbrellas, one cannot miss a Royal Poinciana in full bloom. Throughout Guam, fiery flame trees celebrate the warmth of our tropical sunshine and compete with the sun as the center of celestial attention.

Exquisitely decorating the cliff line above Tamuning and Hagatna, untamed wild Delonix regia look down regally upon their domesticated brethren that luxuriously provide cool shade to Guam’s urban landscape.

The dazzling flame trees are flowering with greater intensity this year, perhaps due to an early heat wave or global warming. Yet, one cannot help ponder that the winds of Sinlaku did much to discourage our flame trees from blooming. Still, despite the storm, all across our island the hills are ablaze with the brilliant glow of these flamboyant trees, so bright that some people call them flame trees.

This year, my favorite flame tree is the one standing majestically in the courtyard of the Healing Hearts Crisis Center on Millionaire’s Mile on the back access road to the Guam Memorial Hospital. This living tree is magnificent proof that God loves you.

Preciously adorned with a bouquet of crimson and salmon colored five-petal flowers, this tree is a sizzling show stopper. Intense emerald green leaves form a beautifully delicate complement to the exuberant yellow, orange, and scarlet flowers that boisterously crown the tree branches. Reaching toward the sky and carpeting the ground in a velvet layer of fallen petals, it creates an iconic picture of Guam’s resilience even after Sinlaku.

Flame Trees most likely came from the lush prehistoric rainforests of Madagascar. These beautiful trees have now traveled around the world and have come to represent Hope, Rest, and Resilience in tropical communities like ours.

In some places, it is known as the Phoenix tree owing to its sweeping, fern-like branches and explosive, scarlet blossoms and petals that mimic the fiery head and wings of the mythical bird in flight.

In Chinese and Vietnamese cultures, the Flame Trees bloom in late spring and early summer traditionally signifying the end of the academic school year, bringing a story of graduation, youthful hope, young love, and transition into the next phase of student life.

There is a popular belief among the Christians of Kerala, India that when Jesus was crucified, there was a small royal poinciana tree nearby his Cross. It is believed that the blood of Jesus Christ was shed over the flowers of the tree and this is how the flowers of royal poinciana got its crimson red color.

In Yucatán, Mexico an ancient tradition sees young girls offering plumeria flowers (Flor de Mayo) to the Virgin Mary throughout the month of May. However, in the 20th century, after a particularly turbulent era in Mexican history, a parallel tradition emerged in June: young boys began gathering Flame Tree flowers to honor the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

Flame Trees create a lovely, dense canopy in the summer, providing restful shade for yards and walkways. These majestic trees stand in open fields or courtyards, welcoming visitors with their sprawling cover and offering cool relief to anyone who seeks peaceful rest beneath its leafy branches.

These aesthetically pleasing flowering trees are accepting of the often-poor growing conditions of urban landscapes such as soil compaction, pollution, drought, and poor drainage. It is salt tolerant and may be planted near the coast, but not directly on an open beach.

Like all plants in the Legume Family, the Royal Poinciana is useful in soil restoration due to its capacity to convert air-born nitrogen to a soil-sourced nitrogen for growth.

Flame Trees are thus valuable, visually striking, and resilient. But even these sturdy trees are vulnerable.

These trees are unfortunately susceptible to wood rot and can get cancer, just like people do. Plant cancer or Brown Root Rot is a destructive fungal disease that hollows out the trunk of the Delonix regia tree.

The disease aggressively attacks the root system and rots the tree trunk from the inside out. Because the exterior can look completely healthy while the inside degrades, infected trees pose a severe hazard of falling unexpectedly and potentially killing somebody.

Internal decay resulting in arboreal structural failure that then brings crashing down a passionately fiery Flame Tree is today’s metaphor for the perpetually pyrogenic Guam Memorial Hospital with its still homicidally rotten electrical system that no one seems to be too much in a rush to fix.

Gov Lou and her sycophants blame financial shortfalls and procurement problems for GMH’s myriad of operational problems.

The harsh reality is that there is no financial shortfall at the hospital if it finally gets rid of political patronage employee salaries!

Because of the greed of Lou and Josh, GMH has too many nonessential employees and never has enough money to pay for them.

This is the true cancer killing GMH and results in these never ending multi-million dollar budget “shortfalls”. Indeed, the internal rot of political patronage corruption is the root cause of the failure to finally fix the hospital’s fire safety debacle.

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During this ongoing 2026-2027 GovGuam budget process, Gov Lou and the cowardly Guam Legislature need to work together to downsize the GMH staff by at least 500 people.

Right now.

Today.

With a budget of $210 million a year, GMH should be able to afford a well-manicured hospital campus. Instead, more than 75% of the hospital budget is spent on employees who can’t get GMH to meet the national Joint Commission accreditation standard for hospital safety.

Thru fire, thru rain, thru mildew and mold, GMH remains steadfast on maintaining its bloated 1,200 warm-bodied payroll with 500 nonessential employees who can’t be bothered to keep the hospital clean.

Incredibly, GMH wants to be paid American hospital compensation while delivering a hospital product that fails to meet the American standard for safety.

GMH must be made a safe and clean place where the poor and the ashamed and the hurting are not only welcome but given a place of honor. Where Power is for Service.

No longer should GMH be a center of GovGuam corruption. Turn GMH instead into a cathedral of Hope, Rest, and Resilience.

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