Ruskin Bond's Book of Nature

by Ruskin Bond

  A sheet of scarlet, no less brilliant than that of the silk cotton, proclaims the dhak (Eiythrina) in bloom. Orange patches indicate where the sacred palas or flame of the forest (Butea frondosa) had found foothold in open and waterlogged spots; pink and white, or purple, where bauhinia reigns supreme, for this tree is an early resident of the foothills of the Himalayas. Cassias of many kinds load themselves with a brilliant gold. The lovely white chalta (Dillenia indices) is scattered throughout the forest; and the kadam (Nauclea cadumba) hangs out conspicuous golden balls.

  The country almonds either show a whole series of brilliant colours in fading leaves, or having changed their dress are subdued in bright green sprays. The dainty verdure of the sisoo (Dalbergia), and the tender pink of new-born peepal foliage, fill all the intervening space.

  The trees are scaled by a multitude of creepers: many kinds of acacia (Beaumontia grandiflora), a mass of snowy trumpets which, when found among the crimsoned chalices of the red cotton, has a wonderfully decorative effect; and the Bauhinia vahlii that scarcely puts out a leaf until it attains the level greenery of the treetops. It is like a huge python, winding round and round its victim.

  Wightea gigantea sends up a strong stem alongside its prospective victim and keeps an absolutely independent growth at first. It then throws out colossal, horizontal roots, which coalesce and form a fatal network round the trunk. This envelopes and sometimes conceals the tree it embraces, except for the highest branches. These, dry and withered, wave like distress signals far above those of its destroyer. The wood of this creeping monster is used exclusively for the making of images.

  Thunbergia grandiflora canopies the tallest trees in wide, lilac flowers, and is a great nectar mart for bees. Spatholobus roxburghii, if it refrains from killing its host, will adorn it with long trails of reddish bloom.

  The undergrowth in these moist subtropical forests is largely composed of acacias: Mimosa pudica, a sensitive and apparently bashful plant, for at the slightest touch the leaflets bend down. Calotropis, on the other hand, might be a fit emblem for boldness, for it flourishes in almost any soil. Called madar in Hindi, it is reputed to be full of good qualities and yields a kind of manna called madar ka shakkar (sugar), traditionally used in the treatment of leprosy. And the silky floss is excellent for making pillows! The buds form one of the five flowers on the darts with which Kama-deva, the Hindu god of love, is given to piercing the hearts of mortals.

  These forests, particularly in the moist eastern Himalayas, are home to many orchids: Vanda teres, muffling its stick-like foliage in beautiful purple flowers; Arundina, stiff and precise in form, growing like a reed, but in the early monsoon decorated with large mauve blossoms. Aerides, among the most beautiful of orchids with rich evergreen foliage and deliciously scented flowers of a peculiar waxy elegance, are found in the marshy tracts above Siliguri. Vanda roxburghii bears spikes of flowers with a chessboard pattern of brown and cream, so singular in its effect that it cannot fail to attract the attention of fertilizing insects.

  Ascending the gravelly spurs, the principal tree is sal (Shorea robusta). It demands a loose, water-transmitting soil covered with decomposing leaves and other debris of the forest.

  Very gregarious, though permitting a few favourites to exist within its regime as ‘associates’, it covers the subtropical foothills with remarkable celerity. The seeds, ripe for germination, are blown far and wide by the monsoon winds. The rootlets of the young trees are always busily engaged in finding a site of permanent moisture. As soon as this is discovered, up is thrust a sturdy young growth of saplings, each a member of the princely family of palms: Phoenix humilis, a dwarf variety rising stemless to yield long leaves which are useful for plaiting into mats or converting into brooms; Calamus rotang, used for the cane bridges employed in spanning the roaring torrents of Sikkim; Colocasia antiquorum, a giant arum whose fleshly tubers provide a staple article of diet and whose enormous glossy leaves are convenient wayside parasols in sudden showers.

  Then there is the instinct with only one idea—to lead in the great race for light! The more vigorous sal trees ascend rapidly. The weaker bide their time, until opportunity offers through the death or destruction of their more powerful brethren. The more successful among them attain a height of hundred to hundred and fifty feet, with a clean stem to the first branch at sixty to eighty feet, and showing a girth of twenty feet. A sal forest has a remarkably individual character. From wee sapling to giant patriarch, each growth ruthlessly waits for the downfall of its neighbour.

  Sal is the most important tree of the Himalayan foothills, providing the bulk of railway sleepers in India. The flowers, minute and sweet-scented, appear in March, in great panicles accompanying the new leaves. In some places they herald in a spring carnival when baskets of them are borne from village to village and distributed to the women as emblems of motherhood. Buddhists especially revere the sal, since it was beneath a sal tree that the great Teacher died.

  Observing Ananda weeping, Gautama said, ‘Do not weep, Ananda. This body of ours contains within itself the powers which renew its strength for a time, but also the causes which lead to its destruction. Is there anything put together which shall not dissolve? That which causes life causes also decay and death . . .’

  These were the last words of Gautama Buddha, as he stretched himself out to die under the great sal tree at Kasinagar.

  The sal, though acquisitive of territory, has many associates of arboreal or herbal growth in its vicinity. One such satellite is Cyeas revotula, a palm-like structure bearing a crown of rigid leaves and flowers in large, evil-smelling cones. And there are many Lagerstroemia, with immense, starry white heads of bloom, over which bees and butterflies throng from dawn to dusk, and in whose dark recesses of shiny leaves the tailorbird sews her nest.

  We find the Loranthus longiflorus, a heavy parasite with handsome orange flowers, killing all branches to which it attaches itself. And, as if to offset it, the life-reviving Vitis latifoloa, whose soft porous stems yield when cut, a quantity of good potable water, is a real boon to those who have to work in these dry and often waterless forests.

  Beyond the sal forests the countryside changes in appearance. The undergrowth is not so high. It thins out, often breaking altogether into yellow sheets of mustard. In fact, the only features suggesting tropical vegetation are giant mops of Pandanus furcatus popularly known as the screw pine; Caryota urens, a palm; and beautiful arborescent ferns.

  The prevailing tree fern is Hemitelia, rearing itself with the aspect of a palm on a rough, slender stem and crested with a crown of feathery foliage. It can claim extreme antiquity, for its fossil remains were found in coal beds, showing that it once constituted those dense antediluvian forests where a multitude of plants, which are now humble shrubs or weeds, reigned as giants of their kind.

  Where there is not a great show of flowering trees, the michelias, near relations of the magnolias, attract notice. Approaching Guptkashi, in Garhwal, my attention was caught by three giant michelias growing beside an abandoned temple a little distance above the banks of the Mandakini river. Why a Shiv temple has been abandoned in this region of intense Hindu pilgrimage was a mystery to me. It was no longer on the main pilgrim route, and that may have accounted for its neglect. But the trees were flourishing, their sweet-scented blossoms strewing the ground and resting against the many lingams that surrounded the shrine.

  These tall michelias have dark green, shining leaves and very fragrant flowers which are used as votive offerings at temples. Another species, Schizandra grandiflora, also called champa locally, is a climbing shrub with drooping white flowers which lengthen in fruit into a fleshly axis. The michelia is among the first true flowering plants to appear in the geological record. It once knew a very wide geographical distribution, but in the battle for survival it has been worsted and is now confined only to the Himalayas and parts of America.

  Birch trees are found in the northwest Himalayas. The birch, tagpa, of the Chenab riv
er, is usually a crooked and stunted tree, but sometimes exceeds one foot in diameter. The annual bridges over the mountain torrents are made of birch branches. The thin white bark of the Betula birch—bhojpatra—occurs in sheets or pieces, which can be peeled off. It was used for making umbrellas, and is still used for writing on, in lieu of paper. It makes an imperishable thatch when covered with sods of earth. And I have even seen it being used for lining a hookah.

  The prevalent poplar is so called by courtesy only. Its broad, heart-shaped, delicately hung leaves, readily fluttering to every breeze, bear a superficial resemblance to members of the poplar family; but in reality it belongs to the witch-hazel family. It is an attractive ornamental tree, popular with those attempting to restore some greenery to the bare slopes of our hill stations. It is not a gregarious forest tree, and is probably best suited to roadside plantation.

  In the eastern Himalayas the atmosphere and soil are too humid for some members of the Coniferous family, but they admirably suit the immigrant Clyptomaria, a cedar introduced around 1920 from Japan. Trim, beautiful and straight it is frequently found between four and six thousand feet. It grows quickly and has the power to withstand all kinds of weather. In Japan it is also grown in hedges and is known as sugi.

  At an elevation of four to seven thousand feet all the herbal flora of temperate Europe is found: violets, buttercups, cowslips, barberry, primrose, St John’s wort, dandelion, stonecrop, periwinkle, commelina, meadow sage, wood sorrel, blackberry, dog rose, sorrel, balsam, poppies, anemones, wild carrot, clover, nettles, wild geranium, nightshade, saxifrage, and alpine rock cress, to list only a few of the many hundreds of wildflowers found at these altitudes from Kashmir in the west to Arunachal Pradesh in the east.

  I will describe a few personal favourites.

  Perhaps it is the commelina, more than any other flower, that takes one’s breath away. Its colour does this; a pure pristine blue that reflects the deepest blue of the sky. Towards the end of the rains it appears as if from nowhere, gladdens the hillside for the space of about two weeks, and then disappears again until the following monsoon. I stand dumb before it; and the world stands still while I worship. It makes me doubt the reality of everything in the world. In Europe it is a charming garden flower, but in its home in the temperate Himalayas it seems to resist any attempt at domestication, growing almost anywhere except in captivity.

  Several varieties of balsam, or Impatients, flourish between seven and nine thousand feet. The term impatients refers to the hasty escape of the seed when the pod is touched. When fully ripe, the pod explodes at the slightest touch. Frank Smythe, in his Valley of Flowers (1930), describes masses of balsam growing as tall as eight feet in the Bhyunder valley and adjoining areas of the Garhwal Himalayas.

  The anemone and alpine rock cress grow on the steep meadows below Tungnath (eleven thousand feet) in Garhwal, and buttercups and wild strawberries are to be found throughout Kumaon, Garhwal, Himachal, wherever it is cool and moist.

  On the bare southern slopes of the hill station of Mussoorie, where little seems to grow, a pink crocus (called by some a thunder lily) pops up in the soil at the first summer shower, flowers brilliantly for a few days, and then subsides, leaving no clue to its whereabouts. In this way it has survived.

  In Kashmir the crocus is cultivated for its saffron. This is the saffron crocus, Crocus sativus, an autumn-flowering plant, the flowers violet with long tubes, sweet-scented. The dried stigmas of this crocus constitute the genuine saffron of commerce.

  Various species of primula and saxifrage are found throughout the Himalayas, while the prevalence of the rambling dog rose reminds us that it is the forerunner of the beautiful hybrid blooms now cultivated throughout the world. In May, the hills around Chakrata are bestowed with dog roses and masses of wild daisies.

  Wild yellow roses are found in Kashmir, Lahaul and Tibet. Early travellers mention double yellow roses at eleven thousand feet in Ladakh. Phulian, or ban-gulab (Rosa macrophylla), the great red rose tree, grows over a wide range in the northwestern Himalayas, from four thousand five hundred to ten thousand five hundred feet. Its fruit is eaten, becoming very sweet when black and rotten. It is one of the most beautiful of the Himalayan plants, though not as common as it used to be; its flowers are as large as the palm of the hand.

  Rosa sericea is an erect, white-flowered rose, the only species occuring in southern Sikkim. It is quite abundant, its numerous flowers pendent, apparently as a protection from the rain; and it is remarkable as being the only species having four petals instead of five.

  Rosa webbiana (kugina) is found chiefly in the arid tracts of the Himalayas from five to nine thousand feet, up to the near Indus, and in Ladakh it is known to reach thirteen thousand five hundred feet. Its fruit is eaten, and in parts of Spiti the stems are used for fuel.

  Edible berries, such as the barbery (kingora in Garhwal) and raspberry (hissa), are great favourites with the hill children, who have to walk many miles from home to school and back again, and often restore their flagging energies with whatever wild fruit is in season. The rhododendron petals are also edible, and make a good jam or chutney.

  In the hills of Garhwal I have sometimes found a tiny blue and white iris growing here and there in the stony soil. It is the kind botanists call pumila, the little one. It is a reminder of the great range of forms and sizes, habits and habitats of this fascinating family which has something like two hundred wild species scattered around the northern Hemisphere.

  A broad-leaved species of iris grows throughout the western Himalayas from two thousand five hundred to nine thousand five hundred feet. The beautiful fugitive flowers of the Kashmir iris, a distinct species, luxuriates over every grave, and blooms on many a housetop (growing out of the earth-daubed roofs) in the valley—a custom resembling that of the ancient Greeks, who venerated the iris as the messenger between God and man.

  Remember, too, that the iris is a flower of innumerable tints, and as the hues of the rainbow are seen by the human eye, so the eye, which is the sole source of our knowledge of colour, is the symbol of the iris.

  The wild cinnamon is common throughout the hills. The young shoots of the tree are often a dark crimson, a provision of nature for the absorption of the solar rays so that the life-giving green granules of the leaf may be preserved until a leathery protective epidermis is formed. The flowers are incomplete, as there are no petals. The bark and leaves are full of an aromatic oil which is well known in commerce.

  Begonias are found in all the shady dells. The great yellow flower, begonia, is abundant in the Bablang pass in the Sikkim Himalayas. Its juicy stalks are used to make sauce, the taste is acid and very pleasant. The remarkable variegation of their large one-sided leaves has made them favourite foliage plants.

  Magnificent orchids grow in profusion on rocks or decorate moss-grown branches with their fragile loveliness. Some shake out a golden spray; some wave delicate lilac and lemon panicles in the breeze; some show golden cones. Strange Cirrhopetalums hold little brown wings over their backs or form a flower one inch in length trailing appendages two to three feet long. Spider-like Arachnanthe opens a flower of yellow so evenly striped with transverse bands of brown that it has earned for itself the local name of bagh-chanira (leopard flower).

  Delicate Cynibidiums fasten themselves to branches with thick, spongy roots and trail long sprays of elegant flowers, some very fragrant, others positively unpleasant.

  Cypripediums (orchids of the ladies slipper species), fairly widespread in the Himalayas, both east and west, swing up a flaunting beauty from the ground in which they lie concealed until the monsoon rains bring them to life. Then, in green, purple, or white arrangements, they display the slipper-like development of one of the petals—one of the most cunning blandishments in Nature’s workshop for securing the assistance of insects in fertilization.

  These orchids—of which there are over forty species—sometimes follow mountain chains on which they occur in small groups or are isolat
ed at great distances from each other. In other instances they are confined to islands or groups of islands, growing chiefly on ledges or in positions where there is a small accumulation of decayed vegetable matter. Sometimes they are exposed to the sun’s rays, but more frequently they are found under the shelter of overhanging trees.

  Many rare orchids in the eastern Himalayas are in the process of extinction—yielding ground, along with other fugitive flora, to the pressures of population and cultivation. Illegal exports have also taken their toll.

  Higher up, the character of the forest changes. The trees are more massive and sombre-looking, and in the moister regions they carry heavy epiphytal burdens: mosses hanging in queer fantastic shapes; orchids; Usnea barbata, the old man’s beard; lichen hanging like bunches of hoary hair; and a host of other parasitic giants so aptly called banda (slaves) by the hill folk.

  Sometimes, though, these hangers-on are not content with the support afforded to them, and actually prey on their hosts, causing considerable damage. This is particularly so in the case of Viscum and Loranthus of the mistletoe family, which kill the branches beyond the places of their attachment, by insinuating their slender rootlets through the interstices right down to the sapwood. Here they form suckers by means of which they completely drain the branch. Even the lichens, although quite harmless in themselves, afford resting places for the seeds of other plants on the lookout for hospitality.