Berms between farmed plots are always worth looking at. In Pilibhit I found colourful wild flowers looking glorious against ripening wheat. What was the flower? Perhaps some kind of goatweed. I didn’t get down there to checj. In monsoons elsewhere I’ve looked carefully at berms to find species of wildflowers I’ve never seen before. They are great places to explore the last remaining accessible wildernesses in the world.
Category: Plants
Spring flowers
Every day I walk to the gym, and look at the signs of spring around me. Trees are in bloom all along my way. I’m very bad at recognizing trees and plants, so I took along my camera one day. I recognized a few. The amaltas (Cassia fistula) that is today’s featured image was one. I know it because it is a native, and the first time I saw a tiger in the wild it was sitting beneath one of these trees in full flower. There are two amaltas trees on my daily route, each about 6 meters tall, and in bloom now.
Gulmohar (Delonix regia) is another tree I know well. When I was in school I had to study five trees around me, and this was one. I’ve had this tree around me everywhere I’ve lived in India. The brilliant red of the tree in full flower is one you cannot mistake. Again, this is a native tree, and you can see it even in remote jungles.
This beautiful tree stands just outside the gate I have to pass through in order to walk to the gym. The boom that you see in the photo is about a meter high. That indicates that the tree is about 20 meters tall. It is in bloom right now, and I had no idea what it is. I had to consult experts. Fortunately I found a group on WhatsApp where experts hang out. In seconds I had my answer. This is a copperpod (Peltophorum pterocarpum), a tree whose native range covers south and southeast Asia up to northern Australia. I have seen it often. Now that I know what it is, and I pass it daily, I hope I’ll be able to identify the species with certainty.
Common frangipani (Plumeria rosea) is another tree which I can recognize. I’ve seen it around me, in India, since my childhood and I’ve been told its name at a time when one’s brain is like a sponge. It is a beautiful flower, which I always stop to look at. The trees are not too tall, between 3 and 5 meters. There are a few different frangipani species which may be confusing. The leaves actually clinch their identity.
This is a neotropical flowering shrub which is widely seen around human habitation, having escaped from gardens in recent times. There’s a whole line of them along the road. There’s variation between them: some trees have yellow flowers, some red, and this has grows flowers with a mixture of yellow and red on each petal. This one was about 3 meters tall. I find myself confused a bit about it because it is sometimes called poinciana, and that’s a name that is given to many different species. So I learnt a different common name today. I’ll call it the peacock flower (Caesalpinia pulcherrima) from now on.
The trumpet shaped flowers of this tree are so common, that it cannot tell you little about the identity by itself. The tree was bursting with flowers, but had few leaves. I found a twig with leaves on it and took a photo for the record. I was pointed to the right genus by an expert, and after some searching found that it is called the pink trumpet (Tabebuia rosea). It’s a neotropical tree which can grow up to 30 meters in height. The one that I see daily is not yet mature then, since it is less than 20 meters tall.
There are three of these tall spreading trees on my daily walk. Although it is not a native, being neotropical, the species is so widely seen in cities that I should have known what it is. It is a raintree (Samanea saman). While coming down a slope I saw that the canopy of a smaller tree was a little above my eye level, giving me a splendid opportunity to take photos of the flowers that cover the top of the canopy. There’s one which stands further back from the road and towers up to about 30 meters. They are grand trees.
Then there are the favourite garden shrubs. This one is called Mexican Oleander (Cascabela thevetia) and is about 3 meters tall. It’s another import, and sufficiently widely grown that it could easily escape. Not all escapees are dangerous. In order to be invasive, they have to grow faster than native plants and co-opt local pollinators. I haven’t seen this one attract many pollinators, so I think it might not escape easily. I’ think I got all the trees and large shrubs that I see daily. I’m pretty sure I missed many flowering trees and shrubs. After all this is not a field guide, but a blog about what caught my eye on one walk.
Burnt grass
Fire ecology is not widely appreciated in India. I was introduced to it only two years ago by a scientist working on the fire ecology of Himalayan grasslands. She says that there’s a yawning gap in the understanding of fire and its ecological role between field ecologists and laypersons. The terai grasslands at the foot of the Himalayas contain sal (Shorea robusta) forests which give way to chir pine (Pinus roxburghii) forests as you move up. Both kinds of forests let the sun penetrate down to the ground; this is the very definition of a Himalayan or terai grassland.
These biomes are characterized by interspersed open areas and stands of trees where you find herbs and grass. In the last decade I found that these forests support a wide variety of birds and mammals, and are therefore highly diverse grasslands, which also support a variety of herbs and trees and insects. They are the base of a food web on which others feed.
Ecologists know that both sal and chir pine are adapted to fire and other disturbances. This means that they survive mild ground fires, and produce seeds which germinate after being exposed to fire. Both species shed lower branches easily, so that their canopies are protected from ground fires by a natural vertical fire gap. The evolution of these characteristics predate the arrival of humans to these geographies. In recognition of this, ecological reserves in these areas let ground fires burn.
I was reminded of this in the Pilibhit Tiger Reserve when one of my companions objected to the smoke from a fire. Immediately our guide replied with a list of the positive outcomes of the fire: “New grass grows when the old is burnt, new trees sprout, animals and birds escape and return after the fire is gone.” We definitely saw new grass growing below burnt stems. One complication is that invasive species like lantana spread faster into burnt areas than many native species.
Popular belief is different. A study showed that most of the local population held contradictory beliefs about the origin of fires (80% thought that they are deliberately set by people who want to forage, 70% thought that it was due to young people whose negligence with cigarettes set these fires). All those polled thought fires were an unmitigated harm. Such beliefs are also widely held among those who teach forestry. Historical research shows that there have been alternate beliefs in the past, but the colonial belief system has now supplanted most alternatives. It is likely to take a long time before the complexity of the phenomenon is widely understood.
Spring leaves
Spring in the air,” she said. He asked “You want me to do it right now?”
Anonymous
Tigers force you to pay attention to nature. As we trundled through Pilibhit Tiger Reserve on a jeep, an alarm call brought us to a halt at the edge of a patch of sal (Shorea robusta) forest. Nothing was visible immediately. Perhaps half a dozen jeeps were stopped there, each with six pairs of eyes. I reckoned that there were enough eyes peeled for tigers, so I scanned for birds. Parakeets and hornbills were all I could see. I know that some of you might find them exciting, but I’m made of sterner stuff. I looked at the new leaves of a sal tree, and its beautiful change from baby red to adult green.
Leaves are an amazing feature of a plant’s anatomy: it’s a flat part that maximizes surface area in a given volume. Large areas are needed both to catch light and to exchange gases. Why would you need to do that? Because you want to capture oxygen from the air, combine it with glucose and produce sugars needed for the plant to grow, and because this process consumes energy, you get it from sunlight. And the water? There’s a network of veins through a leaf bringing the water in and taking the sugar out. And there is a waxy coating on the leaf to prevent water from evaporating quickly.
But chlorophyll, the green coloured catalyst which converts sunlight to food, takes time to be produced in a leaf. New leaves are red due to toxic anthocyanins. As the leaves unfurl, they absorb light, enabling its cells to create chlorophyll by bonding a common amino acid to magnesium. Once the chlorophyll is produced cells in the leaves can start chugging out sugar. I caught the leaves in that transition between baby red and adult green.
Pilibhit Tiger Reserve
Pilibhit Tiger Reserve is one of the most relaxed two days that I spent in a reserve forest. Behind the gateway of the reserve was a wonderful wild landscape, a hint of which you find in the tigers, pythons and langurs. When you want to see tigers in central India you need to travel in the hottest season. It is only then that tigers emerge from thickets where they roam unseen for frequent drinks of water. If you lurk silently at a water hole you are almost guaranteed to get wonderful views. But Pilibhit is one of the handful of tiger reserves in the Terai, the foothills of the Himalayas, where tiger sightings are possible in easier weather.
The biggest reason is the size. It is a relatively small forest tract, and the core area (most of which is out of bounds for tourists) is full of grasslands which support a large prey base. These grasslands, two sections of which you see in the photos above, are home to chital (Axis axis, also called spotted deer), the larger Sambar (Rusa unicolor) and a small number of Barasingha (Rucervus duvaucelii, aka swamp deer) and Hog deer (Axis porcinus). This prey base supports a relatively large number of tigers, so sightings are common. Interestingly we had frequent tiger sightings but we saw little of their prey. Perhaps most herds were in the inaccessible parts of the core forest.
The second reason for easier sightings is that the forest is relatively clear of undergrowth, as you can see in the photos above. It was a pleasure riding jeeps through path that wound through these sal (Shorea robusta) forests. There were also a smaller number of teak (Tectona grandis) and jamun (Syzygium cumini) trees. Although there was little undergrowth, the grass was tall enough to hide a sleeping tiger. Now and then the forest opened up into grassland; the transition zones were wonderful places for bird watching.
There were water holes, but unlike the more famous reserves nearby, this one isn’t drained by small rivers. Instead a system of canals cuts through it to bring water to the farms outside the forest. At it turned out, several of our sightings were near the canals, where tigers had come to drink water. Of course, the canals and water holes were terrific places to loiter around, camera at ready, to catch birds as well as mammals.
The Dead and the Dying
Three ginkgo trees in glorious fall colours against a white wall caught my eye in Shitennoji in Osaka. The Ginkgo biloba is a very special species. It is the last living species in an order of trees whose origin can be traced back three hundred million years. The order flourished for more than two hundred million years before beginning to decline. These three reminded me of a painting by Kishen Khanna called The Dead and the Dying. The painting in muted colours referred to the partition of India. It was briefly well known as the cover illustration of Bhisham Sahani’s book Tamas, but I saw the canvas every day for years. Strange that my mind threw up that memory when I saw these three trees along with the bare branches of the one on the right.
Three pieces of Bonsai: Monday Art
Miniature plants, looking like survivors of many storms and winds: that’s typical of bonsai today. As I travelled across east Asia, and saw examples in various places, I realized that I don’t really know anything about it. What is bonsai after all? It is a miniature plant in a pot, which has been shaped by the grower. I saw these lovely examples in a corner of the Humble Administrator’s Garden in Suzhou. Although miniature landscapes called penjing were part of the Chinese repertoire of gardening, the beautiful examples I saw were very much in the modern bonsai style.
The roots of bonsai (unavoidable pun, sorry) go back to Babylon (and its hanging gardens) and Egypt. Chinese penjing were miniature landscapes, and were often studded with little bridges or huts. This style was adopted in Japan long before the development of bonsai in the 12th century CE. In bonsai there are specified methods of pruning and training, aimed at producing a miniature which looks like the fully grown tree of the same species. That’s exactly what these pieces do, in very dramatic ways.
Momiji
Japanese has a word for it: momijigari, literally, walking under maples. When you go looking for the autumn experience of red leaves, that is what you are doing. And that’s what we were up to when I took these photos of maple leaves in the Garden of Paradise (Gokuraku-Jodo en) in Osaka.
I will have more to say about this aptly named garden on another day. But for now, I am content to look at my photos of the leaves, and play with the presentation. These are photos of the leaves of Japanese maple (Acer palmatum, iroha momiji in Japanese).
Of course the whole point about momijigari is to enjoy the sight of these lovely leaves in the crisp autumn sunlight. But afterwards, when you recall those emotions in the tranquility of home, you can do other things with the photos too.
Seed pod
When I saw these beautiful twists of matter lying on the sun-dappled road under a tree, I had to look up to figure out what they were. There were long seed pods hanging above my head. I think when they fall to the ground they burst, dispersing the seeds. With the release of tension, the open halves of the seed pods have nothing to hold them straight, and so curl into these elegant twists.
Morning glory three ways
When you take a photo of morning glories (Ipomoea purpurea) in the rain you think that would be the end of it. The soft but crisp texture of new flowers, the beading of water over it, the calm contrast of colours between the deep green leaves and the blue-violet of the flower. You would think that this is enough for a photo.
I loaded the photo into gimp, planning to make the usual small adjustments. But just as this invasive vine spreads over everything, a photographer’s habits takes over. Are the colour contrasts important? What if I inverted the colours? How would it have looked in an old-fashioned colour negative? Is there a more interesting way to emphasize the drops? How does it look if you convert it to a sepia print? Which of the three is your favourite? Since I can’t quite decide, I throw this open to the wisdom of the crowds. Tell me.
Don't hold your breath 
