Petal paths

Our highways are rainbows: freeways painted with gold and blue, scarlet and lilac spanning our varied landscapes. If Van Gogh went batty over sunflowers he’d have gone berserk over the blazing avenues of Gulmohurs all over our vast land. Not only do they give a resplendent canopy of scarlet, orange and deep crimson but they also cover the verges of the roads with their brilliant, fallen, petals which chase cars, speeding down the highways like frisky flocks of butterflies. These migrants from Madagascar brighten our plains from April to June, with a second flush in July.

And if these flaring flamboyants weren’t dazzling enough, immediately after them we encountered the long, glittering, brazen assertions of laburnum. They hung their golden tresses from bare branches like naked Greek goddesses emerging from their baths.
To our eyes, soothed by long Mughal-planted avenues of tamarind, the impact of sun-drenched gulmohur followed by the glare of laburnum was a visual overkill. The Mughals, in fact, probably gave the name ‘Tamarind’ to our deliciously tart Imli. Tamar-Hind means the Date of India in Persian, the court language of the Mughals.

Persia gave us the soft, lavender femininity of the massed and scented flowers of the Persian Lilac. These greet us whenever we leave Mussoorie in the cool Spring months of March-April, and drive down to Dehradun. They would be even more eye-catching if their blossoms appeared, like those of the laburnum, after the old leaves had been shed and before the new ones appeared. But like coy Victorian damsels they like to cover their billowing assets in flouncing skirts of feathery leaves. The Persians called them Azad-darakhi, the Independent Tree, but in our Himalayan foothills they seem to be as gregarious as a group of hopeful maidens out of a 19th century romance.

Driving through Dehradun and on to Delhi, at the end of March, we are most often rewarded with the clouds of mauve flowers seemingly snared in the graceful branches of Jacarandas. Some wise old silviculturist probably imported the first Jacarandas from Brazil because its common Indian name is Nili gulmohur or blue gulmohur. Its pleasant colour soothes summer-scorched eyes and we’ve often wondered why more Jacarandas have not been planted on our roads. We have, however, also seen them in all their nebulous glory in Chandigarh and Delhi.

We lived in New Delhi, many years ago and in another professional incarnation. That involved a drive from India Gate to Vijay Chowk every morning. Our route took us past the Vice President’s mansion. On the road, just outside the VP’s abode, was an enormous Silk Cotton tree with a suitably pompous Latin name: Bombax malabaricum. This tree produces fleshy crimson flowers filled with sweet nectar. The nectar, however, ferments in the heat of the sun and converts into alcohol as crows and mynahs have discovered this to their tippling delight.

They drink not too wisely but too well and then fall in squawking, squabbling, heaps onto the road staggering around like ancient mariners on shore leave. Perhaps this is one reason why we have not seen many of these avian bars on other thoroughfares. Their inebriating presence would grievously wound the delicate consciences of our ever-vigilant Moral Police.

On the excellent highways of Chhatisgarh we saw great stretches of boulder-strewn scrubland brightened by the clotted-blood blossoms of the Flame of the Forest, or Palash. We were told that these flowers, too, hold an intoxicating liquid but we have never seen any happy-hour flocks under them. In every way, however, they are dramatic trees. Short, gnarled and twisted, but illuminated by their scarlet, apricot and even canary yellow flowers with black bases or calyxes, they look like naked gnomes festooned with gems.

In marked contrast to the rather bizarre Palash are the trees we saw on the highways of the east. On the causeways of Bengal, soaring above fat, green, glistening rice fields, were genteel avenues of Crepe Flower or the Queen’s Flower. There is a certain understated cultured elegance about them. Their bark is light grey, leaves are light green blushing to red before they fall. Their flowers rise like crinkled, wrinkled feather dusters in deep mauve shading to pink and then to white as they age. We have seen them in late April then again in late July.

Then there were those beautiful roadside trees UP’s Vindhyas. They wore impressive masses of beautiful pink flowers. One of our guides said that these were Pink Cassias, another claimed that they were Bauhinias. We opted for Bauhinias but now we learn that the Pink Cassia flowers from May to June, and the Bauhinia in November. But we saw them in March. So, till we know better, we will classify it as Our Intriguingly Beautiful Unknown Blooming Tree of India!