Summer sights

The neem has flowered as have the Spathodea and Copper Pod trees on our road.

I saw the Shikra this morning - it has been in the neighbourhood for a while, I have been hearing its calls, for the last couple of months. Finally, a sighting. 

Terrace walking has its rewards. 

Chennai summer colours

Bougainvillae "tree"

Copper Pods and Indian Ash

The trees are abloom
Yellows, whites and pinks
Happy kids
out of school.

Palaash Blossoms and Rosy Starlings - by Yuvan Aves

I came across this beautiful essay in the Madras Naturalists' Society, MNS Blackbuck monthly bulletin, and what a beautiful piece of writing it was for me. I wanted to re-read and store it for easy access, and to share the joy of reading this with more people.

The Palaash is a glorious glorious tree, sadly infrequent in my life and Starlings come and go with the season, adding that excitement to the magic of migration.  

Palaash Blossoms and Rosy Starlings - by Yuvan Aves

"From a distance, with some imagination on my part, the tree could well be a titan’s arm reaching up with his palm spread wide, his crooked fingers dripping with magma, having broken through the crust."  Butea monosperma (Palaash) Photo by Yuvan

If not every day, then during every transiting month, the human being who pleasures in taking long walks and communing with the landscape, has something or the other to anticipate excitedly.
March is almost upon us and the Palaash trees everywhere are full of buds, making their branches sag. Very soon, when one looks up one morning, they would have suddenly bloomed altogether, overnight. And the tree would then bear not a sole leaf. Not a tinge of dark green would be seen on its crown, for it would have replaced every single one of them with its tongue like kesari-orange flowers curling towards the sky. From a distance, with some imagination on my part, the tree could well be a titan’s arm reaching up with his palm spread wide, his crooked fingers dripping with magma, having broken through the crust. The roads and walkways below are carpeted. The canopies of the smaller trees around are topped. Its flowers bob all along the shores of a pond or lake, if one is nearby. A tall flowering Palaash is a salient landmark wherever it is.

For a few years I was blessed with the opportunity of walking every morning by a very old Palaash tree, down the road from the campus I taught in. It stood on the bund slope of a village lake. Much of the wood in its ancient rugged trunk had been carved out by insects and the weather, and for much of its height, only a thin rim held up its branches and foliage. How was it managing to convey life to its broad-spread crown? In its shade and across the road were dozens of Palaash saplings of various heights. Some were even young trees at a blooming age, and all were its children. For a portion of the road I had gotten used to the familiar rustle of the flat, wide, brittle leaves of these Palaashes. It wasn’t like the thick gurgling of a Neem tree nor was it like the torrential sound of a Banyan. The sound of the Palaash was like a crowd of paper hands applauding.

Reading Peter Wohlleben and about the Wood wide web, I now think I understand the life of this mother Palaash better. I can imagine its wide roots beneath the road entwined with those of all its children. Maybe many years ago it nourished them, sending down all the surplus nutrition it made in its leaves. Now as it ages and its trunk withers from inside, surely it is in its offspring’s care, which are holding to it and supplying what it needs to keep alive.

Intelligence can extend across larger forms, beyond close fitting skulls, beyond bodies and entities. The Earth, Gaia, has its own inherent intelligence as Lovelock testifies, just as did many ancient cultures much before. And this is not the sum of all its beings and matter. It is a sentient creature by itself. A star cluster may have its own larger intelligence. And a flock of birds have a complex intelligence, unconfined by feathers, flesh and space. How then does one explain starlings and the shapes of their murmurations? Hundreds of birds spiraling and snaking in the sky, a cloud of black masses clustering, stretching, folding and evolving in abstract ways. I have seen a whale, a hook, a boomerang and some other vague resemblances which my mind strives to identify with something of its own world. How then does one explain a whole flock, dispersed across an overgrown pasture, spontaneously taking off together? How also does one explain the settling of the entire flock, all together in the afternoon on a flowering Palaash, or at dusk, on the same leafless tree, as if all were of one mind?  I like the way Robert Macfarlane words this in a poem in The Lost Words - “Ghostly swirling surging whirling melting murmuration of starling flock.”

I speak of Rosy Starlings, the second most common starling I am accustomed to seeing but I might as well be speaking about European starlings or the White-Winged Black-Terns I see sometimes behaving similarly above the wetlands they come to.

Pastor roseus, Rosy Starling on the Palaash - Photo by Yuvan

Rosy Starlings are late migrants into the southern reaches of the country and it is only by mid or late December that I first see little troops of them trickling in. Having not seen them for more than half the year, I always end up wondering what on Earth those birds were which shot over me, when the first arrive. Here during this time in Kanchipuram and much of rural Tamil Nadu, some of the farmers would have ploughed their fields and sowed the Navarai crop (the paddy to be harvested in Summer). But much of the land in dry and semi dry areas is fallow, overgrown with Ban Tulsi, Tephrosia, countless grasses and little shrubs. These untilled fields are where you will find the starlings for most of the day. The flocks will descend steeply from above, swerve parallelly to the ground and in a flicker, would have abruptly vanished into the low vegetation. A second ago there would have been a crowd of nosediving shapes striving to retard their momenta, seemingly a moment too late, and in the moment after, they would have all submerged into the shrubbery as if it were water, with no thuds or squeals. The plants don’t twitch with their activity. I imagine them moving on mute feet, carefully stalking insects hiding by the stems and in the soil cracks. Here and there a starling would jump above the vegetation and land back in. And then one can tell that they are running behind and trying to catch the insects they have flushed. When they decide to, they would all take off in a single explosion.

Rachel Carson calls it the ‘Other Road’, like a lamp of hope at the very end of deeply disquieting and illumining ‘Silent Spring’. In essence, she speaks in this chapter about using wisdom from nature for our means to grow, to feed and to live as opposed to butting heads with the ingenuity of something as old as time, whether it be flooding our food crops with poisons or be it among the countless other practices our contemporary ways of life demand, which has made every stratum of the biosphere less fit for life. 

And while writing of Rosy Starlings one also definitely needs to narate the story of the Xinjiang. This is an agricultural district in China where these Starlings naturally bred every Summer. The croplands here were perpetually under the scourge of Locusts and Grasshoppers, and these phytophagous insects seemed to quickly develop a facile resistance to the expensive quantities of insecticides used on them. It took one sharp observation by a local to discover that Rosy Starlings primarily fed on these very insects as they foraged the fields. The farmers setup artificial nests around their farms to invite the birds to breed nearby and it is reported that in a few years the locust populations fell so low that insecticide use was practically stopped. This success story could underline the importance today of working with nature, aligning one’s efforts along its own principles versus, attempting to subdue it. 

These Starlings also visit the flowers of the Silk Cotton and the Coral tree. Maybe sometimes forage the Babuls and Subabuls (certainly not for nectar). But from what I have seen, the nectar of Palaash blossoms are their single most favourite. The tree is visited also by many other nectar feeders. I would sometimes see Flowerpeckers on it which would have travelled from the nearby hills. One wouldn’t see these tiny tots anywhere near here during the rest of the year. The collective sounds of the starlings emanating from the crown would be like a noisy gurgling stream collapsing on the rocks, drowning out the cackling of the Treepies, the Sunbirds, Barbets, the bawling of the Common Mynahs and also the Bullock carts and Motorcycles passing below. Conversations would briefly pause when we went by this Palaash tree during morning walks. The birds are like a dining hall full of children at lunch break.  

By April the red flowers would have started turning into flat pods and the Rosy starling flocks would have also turned homewards. Yet an old tree, still flowering each year, with its rugged weather worn trunk holds this fragile kinship, a bond between a population of migrating birds and a remote village in the Southern reaches of the country.

Trees have personalities. Some trees behave differently when alone and when in a group of their own company. Mango growers have told me this. Mango trees planted alone succumb more quickly to beetle and fungal attacks than one growing in an orchard. A Banyan on the other hand likes to be a loner and is likely to not let another grow too closeby. Their aerial roots can attach to other trunks, parasitize them and finish them off over time. Quite often an infant Banyan reaches adolescence by choking a Palmyra tree, a very common choice of host given that its trunk is full of crevices, and over many years swallowing it into its trunk and replacing it.  A Palaash is a sought after tree for its flowers. Schools and institutions take home a single sapling to plant in their courtyard. I have come across so many such lone standing trees within paved perimeters which look sickly and which refuse to flower. Or at the most flower reluctantly once in many years. But do witness for yourself in the places where generations of these trees are allowed to grow together as close neighbors. The mature trees blossom punctually year after year.

At a facile level, yes, it is necessary to protect an old tree such as this Palaash, which probably has been by this lake as long as the village has been. It would have seen generations and generations of starlings and other birds feeding from its flowers, chicks growing into adults and flying back with their offspring. Billions of bees, other insects and their larvae would have drawn sustenance from it over the decades. Its flowers would have decorated and sanctified altars and the temples nearby. Its presence would have lent itself, in some subtle or small way, to all those who travelled beneath it. But at a deeper level, an ancient tree offers something else to everything around which is more difficult to put in words. I have found myself at times segue into a conversation or speaking aloud to the Palaash while sitting beneath it alone. A tree can be a patient and non-judging listener, a counsellor even. I have felt healed and discernably more at peace with myself. Sometimes I have stood by it for a long time touching my palm to its craggy trunk and just imbibing the feeling of it. One could say that trees have an energy field around them, as Eckhart Tolle may wish to put it. A field where living organisms thrive but also where one palpably feels thought or any kind of human conflict to be diminished. A pervasive and penetrating space of intrinsic harmony. And if one comes to rest beneath its trunk with stillness one is certainly touched by this dimension. After a while one may walk away with a burst of clarity.

Pride of India, indeed

It is April, and once again that beautiful Lagerstroemia tree on Turnbulls Road is in bloom.  

I photographed it in 2012, and am so glad it has not been axed, and still stands tall and proud, and purple in April.

Lagerstroemia speciosa  -  Pride of India, Queen Crepe Myrtle

The papery flowers

The teak tree butterfly garden

Tectona grandis.  In flower.  Our neighbour's garden

October 2nd

October brings flowers in plenty to our neighbour's teak tree.  I love to watch the tree.  I watch from our bedroom and I watch from our balcony.  Sometimes it is a Drongo that provides entertainment,  quite often the rose-ringed parakeets perch on the uppermost branch and screech indignantly while squirrels scamper up and down the tree trunk.  Today, it was the butterflies and bees show that I binge watched.

All through the day the Common Emigrants flitted ceaselessly from flower to flower, up and down, side to side.  The window frames seemed to be filled with these wandering whites.  As I followed them with my binoculars, a  Crimson Rose fluttered into view, its flight less rushed and frenzied as it gently alighted on a  flower. A light breeze rustled those large teak leaves and it flew on.

Then there was a blur of yellow, a pair of Tawny Costers and a bunch of Common Leopards flitted around on the left.  More white Common Emigrants to the right, and among them sat one Chocolate  Pansy, with its ragged wing edges, slowly circling on the same flower, unlike the other butterflies.

It was the turns of the blues then, a bunch of Blue Tigers and Glassy Tigers passed by.  They did not seem terribly interested and moved on quickly.  Teak nectar was not their favourite drink maybe? A Common Crow also drifted by, but seemed disinterested with the drinks on offer and floated away.

More Common Emigrants, yellow ones and whiter ones.  Oh wait, that yellow one opened its wings, could it be the Yellow Orange Tip (Ixias pyrene).  These butterflies generally come in after the monsoons, so have the rains brought them?   More whites, but these had black edges.  With Bhanu's Field Guide I identified them as Common Albatross Appias albina.

And into the "garden" came a much larger butterfly, solitary, green and black, fluttering its wings even as it alighted on a flower.  it was beautiful and striking, and was unfamiliar to me.  Flick through the book, peer through the binoculars, and now its gone behind the large teak leaf, hmmm a swallowtail for sure, no not a peacock, oh its back in view, I really need to learn to read Tamil, scan the book once again.  Could it be a Tailed Jay?  I need to verify.  Search in Duck Duck Go Go.   Graphium agamemnon, common and not threatened, more frequent post monsoon.  And its host plant is the Polyalthia!  Maybe that's what it was.  Nothing else fitted the bill.

The enduring Teak
and the ephemeral butterfly
Entwined.

Oct 3rd

Common Jezebels this morning, at the tree.

Oct 4th

And a pair of Danaid Eggfly were having a leisurely sip.

Oct 7th

I continue to see new species.  Today, two Common Jays chased each other from flower to flower.  At the crown, Plain Tigers fluttered through the blooms.

Weekend and the Odhiyam tree

The Odhiyam tree (Lannea coromandelica) in our neighbour's garden is bare at the moment.  No, not dying or anything just going through its annual shedding phase.  It is a wonderful time for backyard birding.

At dawn, I heard a Flameback woodpecker at the tree, but it moved into the more leafy Badam (Terminalia catappa).  Later in the morning, the sunbirds hurried through it, they never seem to have a moment to sit and stare, always moving, always calling impatiently and gone in the blink of an eye.

Later, there was a female rose-ringed parakeet, and she fastidiously held a twig with neem fruits (from the neighbouring tree), and ate them one by one.  Once done, she stretched until she was almost upside down looking to finish her meal with some flower buds of the Odhiyam.    She seemed in no hurry to move, and I enjoyed watching her blood red curved beak and that long tail with a streak of blue.

In the afternoon, a treepie stopped for a while, surveying the neighbourhood.  Obviously not up to his high standards, as he flew off with that trademark scratchy call.

After lunch as I lounged around lazily with the crossword, I heard the white breasted kingfisher too, but I was too comfortably stretched to get up and look.

The Odhiyam's leaf shedding  coincides with the koel season, and every year, the males use that tree to woo their lady loves.  In 2012 there was one persistent chap who kept us awake from 3 am.

Today evening there were three gorgeous black young males, and one disinterested speckled female.  They called in turn, and tried to chase each other off,  but all they succeeded in doing was chasing the lady away!

A crow  stopped by, and seemed rather bemused at the frantic calling.  One loud caw and the koels were off in a trice!

Trees.  Birds.  Squirrels.  Butterflies. Family.  All connected.

World Environment Day

Punnai

Walking along the streets of Neelangarai, I chanced upon a Punnai in bloom.

Sekar tends one on our street with diligence.  Maybe it will flower soon.

The best Laburnum I have seen this year

The Laburnums have bloomed a little late this year. This is the best one I have seen so far. Gorgeous isn't it? In one of the lanes of Kotturpuram.

The trees we planted

 

Our Punnai tree planted on the road is now two years old.  My husband and son have assiduously watered it these last two years, and finally it has branched! 

And the laburnum planted a year ago is also doing well.  Continues to be chomped on by caterpillars, but none the worse for it.  I look forward to some flowers the coming summer!

It's Cassia time again

Cassia fistula.  Kalakshetra colony.

That same tree, flowering faithfully again!

I enjoyed its showers of gold last year. 

Hopefully, next summer the one I've planted in our building puts out flowers too.  Greedy me!

Gliricidia sepium

Gliricidia seen in Goa

...and then in Rishi Valley too

such beautiful bunches from this small tree

Purple pride

Lagerstroemia speciosa  -  Pride of India, Queen Crepe Myrtle.
Now showing on a tree near you!

@ Turnbulls Road

@ The Kottur Tree Park

The crepe-papery flowers

 It's the season for the tree flowers.
Purple, gold and red.

The Flame of the Forest

It is the season for the Purusai to  flower, and all over central India the forests will be aflame!

Butea monosperma - Palash, Purasai
@ the TS

On one of the Chithirai tree walks of Nizhal I learnt that Madras was also full of these trees.  Purasawalkam was full of Purusai trees!!  All have been systematically felled.  One survives I am told in one of the temples there.

One flower is all I saw, fallen on the ground

And then Alok sends me this picture!!  A set of blooms from a tree in Shanthiniketan

And now I know why this is the flame of the forest!!

Reds!

Scarlet, orange and red, today.
My 400th post deserves some colour!

Gulmohar - Delonix regia. An exotic from Madagascar
@ Thiruvanmyur

Gulmohar - a flaming torch stands up to the summer heat.

African Tulip tree - Spathodea campanulata
@ the TS, Adyar

Sita's Ashok - Saraca indica
@ the TS, Adyar

Beach Hibiscus - Kaatu poovarasu - Hibiscus tiliaceus
@ the Kottur Tree Park

Beach cordia - Cordia subcordata.
@ the Kottur Tree Park.

Strings of amber

Showers of Gold, yesterday.
Strings of amber today.
Colours of a Madras summer.

Lannea coramandelica - otiya maram, Indian Ash tree.
Seen @ Besant Nagar

September - 2011

In September, post rain.
@ Thiruvanmyur.

Showers of Gold

Cassia fistula

Blue skies, Laburnum yellow
A mundane drive no more.

The beautiful Vaagai

Albizia lebbeck.  Siris/Sirisha, Vaagai.  In bloom at the moment. 
Besant Nagar, Chennai

Murungai on my mind

These last few days, I have been obsessed with the humble drumstick that I love to use in sambar, stew, avail and anything else - soup even.

I enjoy contentedly chewing on that fibre at the end of a nice rice-laden meal, with my plate exhibiting a neat stack of chewed up murangikai.

I am putting together some educational material on indigenous trees, and the drumstick is on the top of everyone's list it seems.

And its not for the drumstick so much as for the leaves! Click on the link and go below Ranjitha Ashok's article to find Vijayshree Venkatraman's similar mind-blowing discovery!

(I know the excitement is a bit dated, but I was always a bit backward.)

Madras Musings - We care for Madras that is Chennai

A miracle tree in your backyard? (By Vijaysree Venkatraman) As children, many of us hated one vegetable with particular passion and greeted its  appearance on the menu with exaggerated distaste. I reserved this treatment for the slender drumstick. The sight of the chewed-out sheath piling up by people’s plates, when they are done with the pulp within, grosses me out to this day. Some cooks use a fistful of drumstick leaves to flavour the lentil-rich adai. Others capture the characteristic aroma of these sprigs in clarified butter – a delicacy I haven’t thought about in a long time now. But at an international conference in Boston, which I call home now, a Red Cross volunteer spoke of a “miracle tree”, which could be a possible solution to malnutrition in poor, tropical countries. Ounce for ounce, this tree’s leaves contain more beta-carotene than carrots, more calcium than milk, more iron than spinach, more Vitamin C than oranges, and more potassium than bananas, the slide read. The protein content is comparable to that of milk and eggs, it further proclaimed. It dawned on me that la moringa, whose virtues the speaker was recounting in French, was none other than our scrawny drumstick tree. The scientific name Moringa oleifera comes from the Sinhalese word for drumstick. A dozen other species native to parts of Asia and Africa belong to this same plant family. “But typically their leaves taste rank or cabbage-like, and some varieties are simply obscure,” an evolutionary biologist tells me. In Mexico, he encountered the moringa once again. Here, the drumstick is an unknown culinary entity, but the fern-like foliage makes the tree an ornamental. “Perhaps it arrived long ago via the Philippines – where the vegetable is popularly known as Mulunggay – when Spanish galleons sailed between Manila and Acapulco,” the researcher surmises. From research literature, I learn a number of facts about this tree, a familiar sight in Chennai. The moringa is drought-resistant and thrives in soils considered unfit for any cultivation. Both the leaves and the pods are edible, which makes it a good food crop. The seeds yield edible oil that can be used as a bio-fuel. The residue of the ground seed can purify turbid water. Typically, gardeners prune the moringa once a year to keep the produce within arm’s reach. Because of its soft wood, timber is the one thing this low-maintenance tree is not good for. There is no zeal, they say, like the zeal of the new convert. I asked my parents to plant amoringa in their compound in Chennai, so that I can have a fresh supply of the greens when I visit them. They responded with an instant ‘no’, saying that it will attract the kambli-poochi.They don’t know the English equivalent of the name, but I guess that it is just a very hungry caterpillar. I was skeptical of this furry creature. Even its name seems made up. Soon, Nancy Gandhi, a long-time resident of the city, also wrote saying that she once had to cut down her a moringa because it became infested with the kambli-poochi. When an American, albeit a naturalised Chennaiite now, mentions the dreaded pest with the funny name, I tend to believe her immediately. Still, I am certain that some veteran gardener would know a nifty solution to this problem. Meanwhile, there was nothing left for me to do except write about the merits of the moringafor an international newspaper headquartered in Boston. In Chennai, my photographer, a middle-aged man, eagerly set out to find me a suitable image. As he roamed the streets on this mission, a helpful auto-driver asked him what he was looking for. The reply, “a pod-ladenmoringa tree,” earned him a smirk and knowing smiles from passers-by. These responses could have had something to do with the local belief that the moringa pod is an aphrodisiac. There is no denying the moringa’s excellent nutritional profile, which is borne out by laboratory analysis, but there has been no clinical study to prove that the plant can combat malnutrition. Perhaps my article will get philanthropic foundations to fund such a study. I could save the world from hunger, I think grandiosely. And if I write about its supposed virility-enhancing qualities, some rhinos might be spared too. New England is no longer puritanical, but sneaking this last bit into the article might be hard. One thing about my current home, however, will never change. The winters will always be brutally cold here. I simply can’t expect the hardy native of the tropics to survive in my Boston backyard. Frankly, I sometimes wonder how I manage this feat myself! Still, there is something I can do. I can write and spread the word about the dietary goodness of a tree whose produce I had done my best to avoid during my Indian childhood.

So, now is there any truth to this kambli poochi belief, that I keep hearing everywhere?
Kavitha Mandana provides first hand evidence.

KAMBLI poochis are a clever lot!

Insects seem to know more about the fabulous treasures that nature holds. Discover the drumstick tree, says Kavitha Mandana

I don’t know if you have ever had close encounters with those, hairy, horrible, creepy caterpillars that we knew as ‘kambli-poochis’ when we were young? During a particular season they would swarm all over my grandmother’s garden in Mysore. And their particular haunt was the drumstick or moringa tree. One day the drumstick tree would look normal, and the next day, its bark would be wrapped in a ‘kambli’ or blanket as thousands of these caterpillars set up home there. I could never eat my grandma’s drumstick sambhar because I always felt it had kambli-poochi fur in it! But I now realise that those creatures were a clever lot. Yes, hidden behind all those bristles is a decent brain. Because they picked the tree with the highest nutritional and medicinal value in the whole garden! How come they know about it and we don’t?

She goes on to extol the virtues of the murangi before concluding that -
All these days, I’ve been eating bananas for brain-food. But if moringa has more potassium than banana, I’m going to switch. I can’t bear to think that those moringa eating kambli-poochis might be brainier than me!

Now, I need to figure out what this kambli poochi is. Is it the Gypsy moth?  No it's not.  Chitra enlightened me that it was the Eupterote mollifier.  This hairy caterpillar can become quite a pest, it appears, completely defoliating the tree in extreme cases.  

The baobab at YMCA

Adansonia digitata - the African baobab.  I believe there are only four specimens in Madras.

I did not see flowers, but it was in pod.  They are velvety, covered with fine hair, and look a bit like the gourds of the sausage tree.

The baobabs grow in water scarce areas, have this massive trunk and sparsely leaved branches, and I believe can live to a thousand years!

Fern leaf Jacaranda in Yercaud