While going to work Wednesday morning, I noticed a strange-looking palm tree planted at the southern end of the Manila Golf Club near the Fairways Tower and McKinley Road. It was definitely a new species, probably yet unseen by the country’s botanists. So I took a picture of it this morning:

Hehehe. It’s actually a disguised cell site tower. If it weren’t for the impossibly constant width of the trunk, I wouldn’t have noticed it. Cell site towers designed to look like trees aren’t a new thing. I’ve learned of such oddities via this remaindered link from Jason Kottke (blogger superstar). You can see more excellent pictures of these fake trees on the Cell Phone Trees page, which Kottke linked to.

I was really amused when I spotted this palm tree because I really didn’t expect to see one here in the Philippines. We’re so used to unsightly structures dotting our cityscape (billboards, anyone?) that it seems frivolous to disguise that a cell tower exists somewhere (radiation effects, notwithstanding). There’s actually another cell site tower about a hundred meters from this one that seems to be disguised as a palm tree post-Milenyo because it had a painted trunk but no leaves.

Anyway, here are some burning questions ripe for investigative blogging:

• Whose cell site tower is it? (I’m guessing Globe Telecom.)

• Has anybody else noticed it and blogged/reported about it? (I can’t find any information through Google.)

• Are there any other such towers elsewhere in the country?

• How long has this tower been disguised as a tree?