Pradip Krishen on New Delhi's trees

Pradip Krishen on New Delhi's trees - India Real Time - WSJ

By Krishna Pokharel

Pradip Krishen

Bistendu, also called mountain persimmon or bombay ebony, is one of Delhi’s native trees that can be seen on Delhi’s ridge and many large parks.

Pradip Krishen is passionate about trees. A filmmaker-turned-naturalist as well as an author, Mr. Krishen spent almost a decade working on his “Trees of Delhi,” his popular 2006 field guide. His “Jungle Trees of Central India,” will be released later this year. Writing about plants and trees was also the focus of his session at the Jaipur Literature Festival, which ended Tuesday.

On a recent afternoon, India Real Time sat with Mr. Krishen, 62, and asked him to what extent New Delhi’s trees are a British legacy. Edited excerpts.

WSJ: What was Delhi’s vegetation like before the capital was moved there in 1911?

Mr. Krishen: All the evidence that we have, which is basically some travelers’ accounts, suggest that most of the area that is south of the Walled City [Old Delhi] was pretty empty. There are some reports by people in the later part of the nineteenth century that suggest it was just rubble, gravestones, old mausoleums, and mostly just a devastated kind of place.

But if you look at the natural ecology of this part of Delhi, there is no reason why it shouldn’t have supported good vegetation. What’s known as the lower-alluvial or the Bangar region, which includes all the areas like Golf Links, Mathura Road, Lodi Gardens, has very good soil. But if you read, for example, accounts of what Lodi Gardens was like at the turn of the century, it sounds awful.

For reasons that may have been partly historical and partly just because it was just over-grazed kind of place, it was very poorly vegetated before trees were planted there after 1911.

WSJ: Are New Delhi’s trees, in some ways, a British legacy?

Mr. Krishen: New Delhi’s trees are definitely a British legacy. But it’s important to sort out what is the British component and what is the non-British component. Obviously, the schemes are getting muddied. For example, along Akbar Road where you have the imlis, now you have second row of amaltas at the back. That is not part of the British planting.

Pradip Krishen

Author and naturalist Pradip Krishen

What is also a British legacy is the prosopis julifora, which has taken over all of Delhi’s semi-wild areas. If you go to the ridge, it is now dominated by this Central American tree that was introduced only in the 1920s. It has invaded this place in a huge way.

WSJ: How important were trees and plants for the design of Lutyens’ Delhi?

Mr. Krishen: There were many many avenues in Lutyens’ Delhi. They initially only chose 13 species of trees and slowly expanded to 16 species, which they planted along various avenues.

The original intention was to have major avenues point in the direction of a particular feature, like a monument or other. The trees that lined the avenue would frame the monument. They wanted the trees to frame that feature by choosing trees of appropriate sizes.

They were consciously trying to avoid using trees that have become so common that nobody would look at them again. For example, all the most common trees that the Mughals would plant as avenue trees, they would tend to avoid.

They didn’t plant mangoes, the banyan, nor the shisham [Indian rosewood.]They planted things like the peepal [sacred fig] but not hugely. The neem [Indian lilac,] the jamun[Indian blackberry] and the arjun became the three main trees for them.

Pradip Krishen

Barna, also called bengal quince, is a small tree that can be seen in full bloom in Delhi in April.

There were some inspired ideas. Very often you take a tree from the wild and you don’t quite know how it’s going to adapt to cultivation. There is for example a tree called the anjan [Indian blackwood.] It’s a tree that to my mind had never been planted as an avenue tree anywhere. It’s not even a north Indian tree. Somebody I think took a bit of a risk and planted it on Pandara Road. It turned out to be one among the most beautiful trees of the city.

WSJ: Did the British planner get some of the trees wrong?

Mr. Krishen It’s only been 100 years and in many cases it’s only 70-80 years since British planting was done. In a way, it’s a good time to do a kind of ecological audit of how these trees have performed.

They tried a tree which is commonly called Buddha’s coconut or narikel. It was planted in one avenue because in some towns like Dehradun it forms very beautiful avenues—very tall, very straight and very formal looking. Somebody who was trying to get that effect would have said “let’s plant narikel in Delhi.” But if you go to Bishamber Das Road today, where it was planted, there are huge gaps and the tree has not survived well.

WSJ: What was their planting ‘philosophy’?

Mr. Krishen To my mind, the biggest issue was that the British consciously tried to avoid planning trees that they knew to be deciduous, trees that seasonally shed their leaves.

Pradip Krishen

Flowers of amla, or indian gooseberry, tree that can be seen in Humayun’a and Safdarjang’s Tomb gardens in Delhi.

They seem to have this bias that if a tree loses its leaves then “we don’t want it.” Otherwise how do you explain why they would not plant the amaltas [Indian laburnum]? It is one of the most beautiful trees that we have in this part.

As somebody who works very closely with trees that are native, I find this odd because actually all the trees that the British planted turned out to be deciduous, like the jamun.

WSJ: What are the ecological challenges that the trees of Delhi face?

Mr. Krishen: Some trees are much more capable of dealing with atmospheric pollution and some are more prone to particular kind of pollution.

Water is going to be crucial. If you plant a tree that has a tap root that goes right down and if you expect that tap root to be reaching ground water, what is going to happen when that ground water levels are dramatically falling because of the extraction of water?