More on Trees

Caesalpinaceae

And now, let us go on to the leguminous trees falling under the sub-family of Caesalpinaceae. By far the most scenic, the trees of Caesalpinaceae exhibit a many-coloured splendour!.

As I am writing this piece, I see Delonix regia, all around me. It is the most eye-catching tree through the last two months (May and June), because of its blood red flowers, large in size and produced in mind boggling proportion. Locally many people call it the 'Flame of the forest', misnomer of the worst sort. The true 'flame of the forest' is Butea frondosa, the Dhak tree of which that famous author, Jim Corbett, spoke so frequently. And quite naturally too. Because, the Dhak is an inhabitant of the forests of Vindhyas and sub-Himalayan regions. It is not seen in Chennai.

Delonix regia is a native of Madagascar: it reached India via Mauritius. A gaunt, unattractive tree when not in flower, it makes itself the cynosure of all eyes of the Chennaivasis. As already mentioned, the flowers are large in size: all but one of its five petals are large with their limbs spread outward. The fifth one has a long claw, small limb dotted with white patches and stands upright. This mottled, odd petal enhances the beauty of the flower. The tree is everywhere in Chennai. Once the flowering season is over, foot-long, flat and dark coloured pods stand out visibly, thrusting out of the newly laid foliage. Its glory is short-lived and so what? It richly deserves its popular English name, the Flamboyant tree.

But the question as to why the Flamboyant tree came to be called 'Flame of the forest', a name that rightly belongs to Dhak, Butea frondosa, needs to be looked into. The Dhak too bears red flowers, though somewhat smaller. It is a denizen of the forests but the Flamboyant tree is a road-side tree in urban and rural areas, populated by man. May be, man, in an atavistic mood, remembered the days when he was a food gatherer, frequenting forests! The explanation is, no doubt, far fetched but plausible.

Gul-mohr, a close relative of Delonix (which incidentally is called by this generic name by some authors), is the small-sized Caesalpinia puleherima, often seen in the compounds of many houses in Chennai. Popularly called the Peacock flower, there are two kinds of this tree: the pure yellow flowered and the bright orange-flowered. But this talk of two kinds of gulmohr has no scientific basis because the red-flowered kind bears flowers which when young are first vermilion edged and streaked yellow. They become red later.

Lord Siva, it is said, is particularly pleased if worshipped with these flowers. The kids in the countryside play a funny a game with these flowers. The 10 stamens of each flower are the playthings of the game. Each stamen has a long filament, with the two-lobed anther at its top end. The players pick a flower each and cross the filaments one by one against each other, much like in a sword-fight. The player who cuts off the anther lobes of the flower in the hands of his counterpart with the filament of the flower in his own hand will have scored a point. Whoever scores six points first is deemed the winner. Of course, no cups or shields are presented! But surely, the children had a whale of a time!!.....

A tree of South American origin, Divi Divi is Caesalpinia coriaria. A non-descript tree with nothing attractive about it, except perhaps that its pods offer good tanning material, it is a small tree with a reasonably well spread canopy of foliage. There is a grove of Divi Divi-s in the Pachaiyappa's College campus and understandably, the grove serves as a parking place for the automobiles that brought people to the college on business.

The copper pod tree, botanically known as Peltophorum ferrugineum, is increasingly appearing as an avenue tree in recent years, especially inside institutional campuses. Obviously, this is an introduced element. It is a tree of immense beauty while in flower and while in fruit too. The flowers are turmeric-yellow and fall to the ground even as they open up, forming a yellow carpet underneath. A very light fragrance entrances you as you walk past the avenue. The goats are extremely fond by these flowers, feeding on them with obvious relish. My conjecture is that the petals have a rich content of carotenoids which are precursors of Vitamin A. Could it be that the goats divined this secret? Someone needs to investigate and if what I guess comes out as an established scientific fact, we'll have a rich source of Vitamin A here, something that could be put to practical use.

Flowering over, the fruits appear in great abundance. They are one-seeded pods clad in a copper colored pericarp. The tree in fruit is as much a visual delight as the tree in flower.

You have long rows of these trees in the campus of Loyola College as also of Vaishnav College. Surely, there must be many more campuses with approaches lined by avenues of this tree.

But of all the Caesalpinaceous trees, the cassia-s steal the thunder. Though yellow is the predominant color of the genus, there are pink cassia-s too. The Indian laburnum is Cassia fistula. It comes to flower in May-June. Its pendulous golden yellow racemes of flowers cannot escape your attention. It is quite a common road-side tree all over Chennai.

Pink cassia-s introduced from various tropical countries and naturally without names in our regional languages are of many kinds: the red cassia, the Burmese pink cassia and the Burmese cassia are the more common of them. The red cassia, cassia marginata, bears dull pink flowers in June-July. The intensity of the flower's colour is dependent upon its insolation. These are small sized trees with small leaves and small flowers but they have a large canopy of foliage. Consequently, these trees offer good shade and I see gatherings of tinytots of Church Park convent playing and eating in the shade of these trees.

There is one cassia, which though is not a tree, merits our attention. It is Cassia alata, a shrub with large sized leaves in contrast to the small sized leaves that all other cassia-s do. Its flowering branches stand ramrod stiff, with the large-sized flowers remaining unopened for most of the time. But what particularly calls us to this shrub is that their leaf juice is an excellent cure for eczema. Indeed, its common English name is Ring-worm cassia! I see it in many home gardens in Chennai.

Not to speak of tamarind tree before we conclude this account of Caesalpinaceous trees would be a sin. The tamarind tree - Tamarindus indica - is an evergreen tree of great economic importance. Though a native of Africa, it is now cultivated all over India, Burma and Sri Lanka. Not for nothing! It yields puli, an ingredient of the most famous culinary item of south India, SAMBAR; the unripe fruit is made into chutney which as it gets more and more seasoned is regarded as an excellent recuperative for nursing mothers; its timber is highly prized; it lives long, for well over a hundred years and therefore, is a favourite of the R & B wing of PWD authorities; the seeds ground to powder and boiled to a paste with gum make a strong cement. In times of famine the tribals make chapathis from the flour obtained from the seeds of this tree. Charcoal obtained by burning tamarind logs burns longer and yields great heat. Verily a multipurpose tree! With the bungalows in vast compounds yielding place to multi-storey apartment buildings, tamarind trees are becoming hard to come by in Chennai. But, surely it is not all that uncommon!

The tamarind tree always evokes childhood memories! Many of the folk tales that we heard as children, spoke of a Bhetala or a Brahma Rakshasi making a tamarind tree growing near a burial ground his/her abode. Oh! what a grist the tamarind tree would have made to the mills of the imagination of Ms. J. K. Rowling, the creator of Harry Potter!

There are other caesalpinaceous trees like Hardwickia binata but then there are not many of its kind, justifying by passing a detailed account of its features and its distribution in the city.

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While on the subject of Caesalpinaceous trees, the mythologist in me wouldn't let me ignore Saraca indica, the real Asoka tree. Ravana incarcerated Sita in Asokavana, a garden preponderent with Saraca indica. There are one of these trees in the Agri-horticultural gardens, where now a garden restaurant is located. I remember the red flowers the tree bore. Legend has it that the flowers turned red as they wept their eyes out in sympathy with Sita as she pined for Rama. I understand Saraca indica is quite common in Tirunelveli district: after all, Sri Lanka is just across the sea. It is also believed that Buddha was born under an Asoka tree in Lumbini.

The Asoka tree of which we in Chennai talk about is the mast tree (Polyalthia longifolia) of Annonaceae and not the true Asoka.