A weekend with trees

17th July 2010:

Off to Nanmangalam extension centre as a Nizhal volunteer. Its been cloudy and rainy in general, but of course on 17th July its blazing hot.

The plan is to take a bunch of 60(!) high school kids around the extension centre, talk to them about trees and their importance, introduce them to native species (as against our familiar exotics like Rain Tree and Gulmohar), and hope to sensitise future citizens against indiscriminate tree cutting and to promote wise tree planting as well.

Usha takes her car, and we trundle along past Pallikaranai and Quaidemillat college, and hear blaring music from a temple loudspeaker. Its supposed to be devotional, but how anyone could feel devotional under this auditory assault is beyond me. Maybe its me that is so lacking in faith?

Anyway, if you think I am digressing I am not. Deepika said that as soon as we hear the music we were to do a U-turn and we would arrive at the extension centre gates! It was a very accurate landmark that no GPS system could have given!

Mr Ashokan the DCF turned out to be enthusiastic and committed, and so the walk was a breeze. The kids arrived with no caps and large heavy bags (should remedy this for the next school visit), but were attentive and interested.

The Extension Centre abuts the road, and there is active tree planting of indigenous species going on here. There were two views on the setting up of this centre but it seems to be here to stay.

The trees below are those planted in the extension area. Interestingly, all these native trees are high on medicinal properties. Its imperative that we research them and obtain patents.

Terminalia arjuna - fruiting

Called Neer marudhu in Tamil, the Arjun tree grows all over India, and is widely used in ayurveda for a whole host of cures. The bark and leaves seem to be helful in treating heart conditions. Morinda citrifolia-Nuna

Another wonder tree is nuna. The fruit you see is used to make juice that is rich in vitamins and minerals.

Alstonia scholaris - Indian Devil tree/scholars tree!

I stared idly at this tree. Not particularly distinguished, but it has these opposing names - Devil's tree on the one hand, and scholar's tree on the other. So our all scholars devils or are all devils scholars?!

For some reason, tribals in the Western Ghats reportedly dont like to sit under this tree as the devil is believed to live in it. Its bark is used to treat loosies, and its wood was traditionally used to make blackboards - hence the scholaris title. Callophyllum inophyllum - Alexandrian Laurel - punnai

A coastal tree, very decorative, and Usha says they are lining the streets in Pondy. I should check next time we go there. And guess what, that fruit you see is quite magical. An oil extracted from its nut is used in anti-ageing creams, and is also a viable biodiesel!!

We saw herbs that help in dandruff control, Vitex negundo (nochi) that is like a backyard mosquito control plant, sandalwood saplings, Indian rosewood and mahogany and so much more.

Next week we go back for a nature walk through the RF, with the same kids.

July 18th:

6:45 am, nagging drizzle, overcast skies. This could have been yesterday's weather, but no, I want sun I get rain, and vice versa! And why did I want sun? So the butterflies would be out, and the birds would be chirping as we took the young children of the Madras Club on a little walk around the club.

Sudhakar and Minni kindly agreed to come in as the experts, and we did stroll around the club grounds, heartened by the enthusiasm of the children. Thankfully trees stay where they are, and so we used them as the anchors for our walk!

The lovely banyan, the spreading rain trees, fish-tail palms, the massive neem on the lawns and the plentiful copper pods provided talking points.

As did this Gastropod.

The huge snail that caught all the oohs and aahs

Check out the muscular foot that the snail uses to move along, by its contractions. 1mm/second average snail speed.

Isn't that a beautiful glistening shell?

Commelina - day flowers

Sudhakar pointed out the day flowers in the green lawns underfoot. Click on the picture and see the flower zoomed in, its rather lovely, delicate and intricate, all for a day.

But this tree below was unidentified Tree unknown (Identified as Mimusops elengi - Magizham)Plumeria obtusa - Singapore frangipani

The flowers of this plumeria are different from the common one, rather more elegant I thought.

And so we wound up, after more earthworms, cotton stainer bugs, seven spotted cockroaches, millipedes, centipedes and a red bead tree.

We were rewarded by a sumptuous breakfast that included "mla pesarattu" - also a first time for me!!

July jottings

Nizhal's PWD park

• Need to number the trees
• Usha cuts palm webbing along with the paper, oops.
• Arrive, and its all cloudy, green and overgrown.

Nice!

• Spider eyeballs me. Annoyed at being disturbed.
• Look at his hairy legs...or is it hers?
• Scurries away under another leaf, and I decide not to disturb his peace.

• Butterflies everywhere
• Common lime, plain tigers flitting about.
• These two caught, and its just my Sony Ericcson phone cam!

• Two chital stags looked on curiously, nervous as well?
• We are only labelling the saplings, boys, I wanted to say.
• But the closer we got the more fidgety they were. And then with a leap and a charge they were off, beautiful antlers and all.

Anyways, the job was done, the rain held off, and the snakes stayed away.

Leopard in Kabini

Leopard in Kabini - Dr Alaganantham's Photos

May 2010 - Nagarhole park, Kabini.

Geetha writes:

a leopard sauntered across the path in front of our jeep in a very
leisurely fashion. Needless to say, the shutterbugs (Arun and Dr
Alaganantham) went on an overdrive!

On seeing the photos, Mr Ravi Chellam of ATREE, responded

Based on the photo-data base we have, we have been able to identify this male leopard as NHL-225, whom we first photo-trapped in March 2008 and also have had subsequent photo-captures. He seems to be a fairly tolerant and very visible leopard as we have photos of him from at least one other tourist.

I thought that was interesting - a leopard with a personality quirk?!

Aigrettes and egrets

A sonnet for the egrets:

Pulicat Lake - a crowd of egrets with a couple of painted storks

In the Adyar estuary,
At Pulicat, Pallikaranai, Nelapattu,
Standing stock still and wary
Even in far away Ranganathittu.

The yellow feet of the little egret

Little egrets, feet so yellow
Intermediates, standing tall in a throng
Cattle egrets, plumage mellow
Great egrets, necks and bills so long.

Cattle egret in breeding plumage. Photo by Mr Ramanan
All dressed in white,
Familiar, in pensive pose
Makes me often wonder, might
They really be so morose?

Now I learn it is their aigrette in breeding season

That used to be a milliner’s delight, all with reason!

Great egret - Casmorodius albus - tallest of the white egrets. Long neck, and bluish green lores. Those feathers on the back are additional breeding plumage. Photo by Mr Ramanan
Intermediate egret - Mesophoyx intermedia - smaller than the large. Yellowish lores during breeding. What you see is additional breeding plumage. Photo by Mr Ramanan
Little egret - Egretta garzetta - small and graceful. What a pose! Photo by Mr Ramanan

Photo by Mr Ramanan

White nights on the Neva river - Gold, malachite and amber

White nights on the Neva river begins here.

We Indians love gold. We hoard it, smuggle it, wear it, gift it, flaunt it, like no other people in the world. Or so I thought, until I went to St Petersburg in Russia, last month.

Wherever I turned in this city of the eighteenth century, I saw gilded domes, gold painted decorations, and golden statues and ornaments. And the cathedrals and palaces would have malachite columns, jugs, engravings and what have you.

There were so many shops selling amber as well!

The needle spire of the cathedral of Peter & Paul. Ready in 1733

Nicholas Cathedral, built between 1753-62

How did they not get stolen, looted or defaced during the revolution, I wondered. And where did all this gold come from?

Turns out that gold in Russia and Peter the Great, St Petersburg's founding Tsar, have a strong link. He encouraged the exploration and mining of gold at the turn of the eighteenth century in Russia. According to the Gold Miners Headquarters, he issued a legal document called The Mining Privilegei", in 1719, and this encouraged private prospecting and the eventual discovery of gold in the Ural mountains.

Of the monuments and cathedrals, we saw, the spire of the cathedral in the Peter & Paul fortress complex, is one of the earliest decorative uses of gold, (I think) in St Petersburg.

The dome of St Isaac's. 100kgs of gold leaf were required to gild it. Opened in 1858

And then came the discovery of gold at Ekaterinburg, and malachite as well. I guess this was the time that Catherine II (aka Catherine the Great) reigned supreme.

This interesting tidbit I picked up from the jeweller Glimmerdream, as they traced the history of malachite:

In 1835, miners working the "Nadezhnaya" pit of the Mednorudyansky malachite deposit in the Urals exposed a malachite boulder of the highest quality that would eventually be found to weigh over 260 tons.
It took nine years to free the gigantic pocket from the body of rock without breaking it, and almost twelve years to bring it to the surface. Slabs from this find were used in the interior of the Anichkov Palace, as well as the Winter Palace where it was used to face eight columns and eight pilasters in the Malachite Room -- created by the architect brilliant "master of the interior" Alexander Bryullov in 1837 as a drawing room for Empress Alexandra Fyodorovna (Fredericka Louise Charlotte Wilhelmine, Princess of Prussia) (1798-1860), the wife of Emperor Nicholas I (1796-1855).
This same boulder also supplied enough malachite to face eight of the ten huge Corinthian columns that support the three-tier two-hundred foot gilded iconostasis (the icon wall that separates the altar from the rest of the church) of St. Isaac's Cathedral in St. Petersburg. (The other two columns are faced with lapis.)

Malachite Room at the Winter palace - 1839, showing the gilded doors as well
Malachite Room, again. This was the room where the Provisional Government based themselves, in the interim between the fall of the tsar and the takeover by the Bolsheviks The gilded iconostasis within the P&P cathedral

We did not visit the Catherine Palace in the town of Pushkin, but I read that around 100kgs of gold was used to gild the facade of that palace, too! That's crazily over-the-top, I thought. No wonder they had a revolution! The Catherine Palace is also famous for the legendary Amber Room. On my return, I have learnt that Russia -Kalingrad in particular - has almost all the world's mineable amber! Called Konigsberg at the time of Peter the Great, it was from here the Prussian emperor Frederick I gifted the panels to Peter. They were stolen by Hitler's Germans during WWII, and taken back to Konigsberg castle, and were supposedly destroyed in the fire that broke out in the castle in 1945. (The panels in the Catherine Palace now are replicas.)

Worthy of a Dan Brown thriller, is the mystery of the amber room. In fact, there is a book about it. The Amber Room: The Fate of the World's Greatest Lost Treasure. After reading the Observer's review of the book, I am sufficiently intrigued to want to go out and look for the book, now!

More gold, decorating the top of a wooden cabinet at the Winter Palace

Gilded statues at Peterhof's Grand Cascade

We saw gilded statues all over Peterhof in the gardens. These were originally lead, reportedly, and were gilded later.

But why was there no mass looting and plundering, when the Bolsheviks more or less took over St Peterburg, in 1917?

Were they as disciplined as John Reed makes out in his eyewitness account, "Ten days that shook the world"? Here's an excerpt from "The Bolsheviks Storm the Winter Palace, 1917" EyeWitness to History, that quotes John Reed.

A number of huge packing cases stood about, and upon these the Red Guards -and soldiers fell furiously, battering them open with the butts of their rifles, and pulling out carpets, curtains, linen, porcelain plates, glassware.

One man went strutting around with a bronze clock perched on his shoulder; another found a plume of ostrich feathers, which he stuck in his hat. The looting was just beginning when somebody cried, ‘Comrades! Don't touch anything! Don't take anything! This is the property of the People!’ Immediately twenty voices were crying, ‘Stop! Put everything back! Don't take anything! Property of the People!’ Many hands dragged the spoilers down. Damask and tapestry were snatched from the arms of those who had them; two men took away the bronze clock. Roughly and hastily the things were crammed back in their cases, and self-appointed sentinels stood guard. It was all utterly spontaneous. Through corridors and up stair-cases the cry could be heard growing fainter and fainter in the distance, ‘Revolutionary discipline! Property of the People.’

We crossed back over to the left entrance, in the West wing. There order was also being established. ‘Clear the Palace!’ bawled a Red Guard, sticking his head through an inner door. ‘Come, comrades, let's show that we're not thieves and bandits. Everybody out of the Palace except, the Commissars, until we get sentries posted.’

Two Red Guards, a soldier and an officer, stood with revolvers in their hands. Another soldier sat at a table behind them, with pen and paper. Shouts of ‘All out! All out!’ were heard far and near within, and the Army began to pour through the door, jostling, expostulating, arguing. As each man appeared he was seized by the self-appointed committee, who went through his pockets and looked under his coat. Everything that was plainly not his property was taken away, the man at the table noted it on his paper, and it was carried into a little room.

Or was it, as noted in Wikipedia

"The Palace was pillaged and devastated from top to bottom by the Bolshevik[s]...Priceless pictures were ripped from their frames by bayonets. Packed boxes of rare plate and china...were broken open and the contents smashed or carried off. The library....was forced open and ransacked.....the Tsaritsa's salon, like all other rooms, was thrown into chaos. The colossal crystal lustre, with its artfully concealed music, was smashed to atoms. Desks, pictures, ornaments—everything was destroyed."

The enormous size of the gilded domes and statues possibly saved them from looters? Ironically, the personal collections and the decorative idiosyncracies of the tsars and tsaritsas of the Romanov empire, now serve the people of Russia, bringing in foreign tourists by the busload, and earning huge amounts for the country, as we all collectively gawk at a lifestyle that was.