Adieu, my friends
Enough is enough, as the cliche goes. We've been talking of trees in Chennai for quite some time now. Suddenly, I find that I ran out of folklore associated with trees and I felt it would be criminal of me to heap botanical details on my readers: those interested that way can always reach out to botanical treatises.
Take for instance the casuarina, Casuarina equisetifolia. What can I tell you except that its green needles are stems, that its leaves are brown and scaly, forming whorls around the nodal points and its fruit is as peculiar sort of collection of thin-walled
achenes.
Anything of popular interest that I can tell you about this tree is that its trunks offer good material for erecting good scaffolding, is good firewood and the residual left-overs, once you make logs, is employed in firing brick-kilns.
I'm afraid such stuff does not make up my cup of tea, at any rate now, when I am about to become a full-fledged octogenarian. Now, what interests me about a tree is whether it found a place in the literature of our land, whether some folklore is built around it and at the least whether it finds a place in some pharmacopolia. When I find myself unable to feed my readers with that kind of information, I felt I should cry a halt.
For example, there is Berrya ammonilla, popularly called Trincomalee wood tree, whose timber is used in making quality furniture. Years ago, I saw a lone Berrya tree growing near Kilpauk Police Station on the Poonamallee High Road, now called EVR Salai. Even as I was mulling over what else I can say about this tree, I found the Mother of Pondichery Ashram attributing to it a quality, 'liberation of the vital'. A friend knowledgeable in such matters tells me that 'liberation of the vital' means release from passions. I would leave it at that for I don't think I am competent enough to dilate upon the subject any further.
And then you have Morinda tinctoria, called nuna in Tamil. It is quite a common tree in Chennai, not quite falling within the title of this section. It is a medium-sized tree, easily recognised by the peculiar kind of fruit it bears, called syncarpium: It is formed by the fusion of enlarged calices of several adjacently located flowers.
Guazuma tomentosa and Grewia orientalis, like Morinda tinctoria do not quite fit in here because they are quite common in Chennai. However, they are of interest only to students of botany. But, a word about Grewia orientalis, called in Tamil pulippu-inippu pazham, a name that clearly suggests children get a delight out of eating its fruits.
Another tree that interests me is the silver oak,
Grevillea robusta. When I was seriously occupied in the job of teaching botany, I brought a sapling of this tree from Kodaikanal and planted it in the garden of D G Vaishnav College, where I was working at the time. Its leaves have shining, silvery under surfaces: hence, silver oak. In the hills, it is grown in coffee and tea plantations to offer shade to the growing saplings. However, I was tickled to know that the wood of this tree, along with that of teak, was used in building a replica of the aeroplane first built by Wright Brothers, by our engineers at HAL,
Bangalore.
And lastly, there is the tree of heaven, Ailanthus excelsa. If my memory serves me right, there was a tree of heaven, right opposite the principal's room, very sensibly located near the gate of the college campus. It offered shade to the girls (and the parents of the girls) aspiring to study in that college. To such of them as whose names figured in the lists of new admission, the tree was literally a tree of heaven.
I understand the tree has been felled. A pity!
Friends, I am done. I have no doubt whatever that I did not list all the trees found in Chennai. Age would not let me undertake trips to locate trees in the various places of Chennai. I wrote about the trees that I remembered. Memory is a funny faculty. Even as I was telling myself that there are no more trees which I can remember, Ecoecaria agallocha, which was there in the backwaters of the Cooum river, under the bridge near the Anna Salai end of Swami Sivananda Salai (formerly called Adams Road) comes to mind.
It is a mangrove tree. Whether it survived the building of MRTS of the Railways, I do not know. But why I remember this tree in particular is because the late Dr Rangaswami Iyengar, retired professor of botany, Annamalai University, and my teacher at Kakinada, where I did my B.Sc. told me that a wonderful scent is made from the tree. Unfortunately, I did not pursue the matter.
And then come to mind, Emblica offrivalis (nelli) and Cicea dislicha (aranelli), rich in Vitamin C and favourite fruits from which tasty pickles are made. Surely, these trees must be growing in some compounds in
Chennai.
And that is that, my friends. I must acknowledge the encouragement I received from Shri Ravichandran, chief, Chennaionline.com and Ms. Chitra, associate editor of the Website. They were helpful in more ways than one. I can never adequately thank them.
They gave me an opportunity to talk of trees, not as a botanist but as one who is grateful to the Almightly for all this biodiversity He put into the biosphere, of which man is but one member. Let man remember that he exists, thanks to trees. After all, as the saying
goes
Finally,
I am thankful to all the authors and publishers of various botanical treatises. I consulted and freely borrowed information. I hope I've not violated Intellectual Property Rights. If I did, the acknowledgement made should absolve me of the crime of violation. So, here is the list of books I consulted:
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Flora of Madras Presidency - J S Gamble,
B.S.I.
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The Flowering Plants of Madras City and its Immediate Neighbourhood - P V Mayuranathan
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Revised by: C Livingstone and A N Henry - Commissioner of Museums, Govt. of Tamil
Nadu.
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Medicinal Plants of India by S N Yoganarasimhan: asstd by V Chelladurai
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Indian Medicinal Plants - (7 vols) - Arya Vaidya Sala, Kottakkal, Orient
Longman.
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The Garden of Life - Naveen Patnaik - Harper Collins.
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Flowering Trees and Shrubs in India - D V Cowen - Thacker & Co Ltd, Bombay.
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Flowering Trees in India - M S Randhawa, D.Sc., I.C.S, ICAR, New Delhi.
