Over the weekend we went to a resort called Windflower Tusker Trails, Bandipur. Actually its a 17 year old resort belonging to the Mysore royal family which has been leased to the Windflower group to run professionally. The whole resort was covered with this one tree and was so obviously planted and a monoculture effort. Asking the management I did not get any satisfactory answers -- jungle trees - was the regular response.
Since I do know about trees and these were certainly not 'jungle' I decided to take closeup pictures of the bark and the leaves and post them on my e-tree group. Overnight I had the answer from a Rashida Attar, a botanist who correctly named the tree - Anogeissus latifolia - or the Indian Gum. How I knew she was correct was when I googled the name she supplied and the second picture on the blog popped up and I recognised the beautiful seed clusters! Presto! I had my answer!
Wow! I just love the internet!
Infact from the same group I had a Neil Soares who even told me that I should soak the seeds and throw away the ones that float and plant only the ones that sink!
Thats something my Grandmother did with eggs when we were kids. The 'koli muttae' man brought his brown eggs in a basket and she put them into water and took only the ones that sank! All of us children sat around and watched. And I was so worried that the 'chicks' in the eggs would drown! My overly imaginative writers mind had already begun to form I guess!
Now off to my beloved Hoskote to plant my very own forest of Indian Gum, if several seeds do sink! Will keep you posted!
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