The shade cast by the canopy of the exotic rain tree and the native peepul are appreciated by those bearing the brunt of the scorching temperatures in Indian cities. In fact, many cities across the world are already gearing up to meet the challenge posed by climate change and urban heat island effects. Exotics from Japan and China are being raised in an experimental nursery in Germany and may provide the next generation of trees that line German streets in an attempt to keep the cities cool. Similarly, the exotic African tulip and the naturalized tamarind both support biodiversity in Indian cities. Quite unsurprisingly, this approach has triggered much controversy.
The debate of native versus exotic continues to be controversial, and the scientific debate rages on. What is clear, though, is that the binaries of native and exotic are too simplistic a way to look at trees in cities. We need to decide what trees to plant keeping in mind existing local, social and ecological contexts, and to plan for a future where we may see drastic alterations in climate. Understanding the science behind these terms, looking at people’s preferences and bringing in additional distinctions between invasive and naturalized species can help us move beyond this polarized debate.
FOURTEEN
SCARLET
SILK COTTON
The scarlet red silk-cotton tree is most vibrant and at its colourful best in the pre-monsoon season. Devoid of leaves between January and March, the tree may appear dull with its characteristic spiky greyish bark, a sight that is redeemed by the striking large, red flowers that cover the entire canopy. A few weeks later, the large seed pods burst, releasing cotton-like fibre that is used to stuff mattresses, pillows and razais—just in time for the winter. Birds, bees and butterflies feast on the nectar of the tree, which is found across Indian cities but is most widely distributed in north India and characteristic of cities like New Delhi and Jaipur.
The red silk cotton is majestic and a tree of grandeur. In its native habitat, the forests of temperate and tropical Asia, it is a massive emergent tree. In the sandy soil near riverbanks, where it is often found, the tree juts out high into the sky and can be seen for miles around. If you are trekking in the forest without a landmark, having an emergent silk cotton can be a lifesaver, helping you reorient—quite like walking in Paris with the Eiffel Tower helping you find your way, or in Japan next to Mount Fuji.
The tree has an unmistakeable appearance. The bark is an unusual silvery grey when young. The main trunk stands tall and straight, with large branches that jut out horizontally, almost like the ribs of a giant umbrella. This is why the tree is sometimes called the umbrella tree too. But then, this is a tree with many names. Called semal in Hindi, it is also the shalmali in Sanskrit, tera in Manipuri, buruga in Kannada and Telugu, and savar in Marathi.
The bark of the young tree is covered with large, cone-shaped prickles or thorns. It is an adaptation that the tree developed in its native forest habitat to discourage animals from feeding on it. This is especially useful in cities, where the silk cotton can grow to great heights, undisturbed by goats and cattle. But even these thorns are not enough to keep the tree safe from humans. People cut and grind the thorns into a paste, to make a face pack that treats skin troubles such as acne, and even headaches. When older, the bark turns grey-brown and the prickles often disappear, especially near the base, though you may still see some younger branches covered with thorns.
A full-sized adult tree can grow up to 40 metres, or even taller, although the trees we see in cities are typically smaller. The tree can seem to be almost as thick as it is tall, especially at the base. A giant silk cotton tree in Nandhaur Wildlife Sanctuary, Uttarakhand, is 36 metres tall and 16 metres in circumference. Believed to be between 150 and 200 years old, it takes at least a dozen people to be able to hug it completely. In all likelihood, there are silk cotton trees that are even larger and yet to be measured.
The roots of the red silk-cotton tree need to support a tree of such height. To protect the trunk from falling during monsoon storms, the tree develops buttresses at the base. Just like the stone and cement buttresses built against the wall of many old churches support their height, the buttresses of the silk-cotton tree are large and wide, looking quite like planks or wings that are curved and attached to the base of the tree with glue.
A similar-looking tree, the kapok or Ceiba pentandra, is also colloquially called the silk cotton, but it is found in the tropical regions of the Americas and West Africa. In West Africa, the buttresses of the kapok can be of such uniform thickness that many native tribes carve out sections of the buttress and use them as doors to their homes. Columbus, on his first voyage to the West Indies, found native tribes using the hollow trunk of this tree to carve out canoes—one canoe, dug out of a single tree, was large enough to accommodate 150 people. In India, our red silk cotton can be used to make ships and catamarans. But though the tree is large, its wood is soft unlike the wood of the kapok. The red silk-cotton is not very useful as a timber tree and, therefore, cannot be used to make solid, big furniture. The wood is used to make matches, coffins and smaller items like toys and spoons. Some tribal communities, such as the Kathodis of Rajasthan, also use it to make musical instruments such as the dholak and tambura.
The red silk-cotton tree loses all its leaves after the end of the monsoon and presents a very striking appearance between January and April, before the first shower of spring. Naked and leafless, the tree looks like a sculpture of bare branches in January. Soon, the first flowers begin to appear. The blossoms are large, in keeping with the size of the tree. The beautiful red flowers remain tightly closed during the day, opening only in the evening. Throughout the day and well into the night, the flowering tree is covered with insects and birds, some seeking out the nectar, others visiting to drink the water that gathers at the base of the flower, and still others flying in to eat the insect buffet on offer. The birds push their beaks into the flowers to collect the nectar as well as the water that it stores in its cup-shaped bottom end. The flower is craftily designed, so that when the birds pull their beaks out, they are dusted with a coating of pollen. On the next visit, the birds pass on the pollen to the flowers, pollinating them—a win-win situation for both the tree and the bird. Interestingly, the flower is a favourite of the Hanuman langur.
Silk-cotton flowers are widely used, from the preparation of Holi colours to spices. Like the amaltas, a powder from the silk-cotton flower is popular in eco-friendly Holi celebrations—something you can keep in mind for next time. The flowers and young calyx (the part below the flower with the green sepals) are cooked in curries and eaten by many forest tribes, and can be dried and ground into flour, stored for other times of the year. The inner part of the flower is an important spice in Thai cooking. In Maharashtra and Karnataka, the buds are plucked before they mature. They are dried and used as a spice (Marathi moggu). Young roots and even young bark can be eaten in times of famine. The flower can also be soaked, ground into a paste and applied on sores and boils—a useful trick to know.
It is not just the flower that has medicinal properties. All parts of the tree—bark, fruit, gum, leaf, seed, root and even the spiny prickles on the trunk—are used to prepare herbal and Ayurvedic medicines. The roots can be roasted and eaten, particularly during times of famine. Also, various parts of the tree can be used to treat an impressive range of diseases, from anaemia to infertility.
But the silk-cotton tree is most famous for the silky threads that are stuffed inside the seed capsule. During colonial times, experiments were made using the cotton, which is very light and water-resistant, to create lifebuoys. The Indian Textile Journal reported, tantalizingly, that, ‘A man weighing 132 pounds was let down one of the deep wells in the gardens’ (with a belt of oil cloth, stuffed with silk cotton, tied around his waist). The belt ‘not only kept him suspended in the water with ease, but he was able to carry at the same time in his hands a dead weight of twenty pounds’. These experiments, however successful, do not appear to have taken off, as we do not hear
of silk cotton life jackets in use today. The fibres are short and brittle, and cannot be stretched and spun into thread or cloth. They are, however, soft, white and fluffy, and used across India to stuff pillows, mattresses, and even insulating hot-case boxes and soundproof covers.
As children, we used to play with the floating silk-cotton seeds for hours on end during the summer. The lightest breeze is enough to set the seeds floating through the air—the game we played was to blow them from place to place, always making sure that the seed did not land on the ground, or on any surface. Whoever could keep the seed afloat for the longest time won the game. Of course, this could only be played when there was no breeze, which is why the summer vacation months, still and windless, were perfect for this game. In north Indian cities, the silk-cotton tree is often planted in parks. It is common to see families collect under the tree in the summer, with everyone, from grandparents to toddlers, engaged in collecting the seed pods, taking them home and extracting the white fluffy threads that they could either use themselves or sell to mattress makers.
The summer months were also the time when Indians would get their mattresses opened to have them restuffed or fluffed up. Itinerant families in the mattress trade would go along the road, calling out to customers. This process is known in Telugu as doodhi ekadam (where ‘doodhi’ in Telugu means cotton and ‘ekadam’ refers to separating) and is traditionally conducted by the Dhunia community. The Dhunias carry a stringed instrument with a vibrating bowstring. The strings are plucked, with a loud twang, to announce their arrival in the neighbourhood, and the same instrument is used to clean and fluff the cotton. The sound of the instrument would inform residents that it was time to take out the silk-cotton pods, collected from the trees in the backyard or the neighbourhood and carefully stored over the year. It would be a sight to see—with all the children gathered around to watch, as the stitching on the side of the mattresses and pillows would be carefully unpicked and the silk cotton extracted. After months of use, the cotton filling that would have clumped into hard pockets would be disentangled, fluffed up and evenly stuffed back, sometimes fresh cotton added, after which the mattresses and pillows would be stitched up. The process took an entire day. The courtyard would be covered with wisps of cotton puffs flying all around, getting into ears and noses, making everyone sneeze. It was a joy to sleep on the rejuvenated mattresses again though, at least for a while, until they became misshapen and lumpy again a few months later. With today’s mattresses of foam and spring, the use of silk cotton is fading except in small towns in India, where the tree is still prized. But the cotton produced was excellent stuffing for pillows, far more comfortable and environmentally friendly compared to the foam stuffing used today. It is very rare to see Dhunias in cities now. Many of them have in fact shifted to a range of other occupations.
The red silk-cotton is not the only tree from which cotton is produced—far from it. From Alexander’s army, which came to India in 326 BC, to Al Beruni, who visited Gujarat in the eleventh century, and British explorers in various parts of India, a number of historical accounts describe the widespread presence of cottons spun from other trees. The Portuguese and British brought in the related sea island cotton from Brazil, which became popular in various parts of India. The cotton from these trees, prized for their fine quality, was used to produce excellent muslins. The cotton fibres they produced were relatively long and could be woven easily, unlike the coarser fibre of the red silk cotton, which could only be used for stuffing. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, India was a surplus producer of these extra-long cottons. But the diversity of cottons that India once produced from various species of tree cottons have now largely disappeared from our collective memory. We no longer have the cultural knowledge about how to use them, or the ecological knowledge of how to maintain and cultivate them.
The red silk-cotton is valued for more than its cotton, the spices from the flowers, and its medicinal properties. The tree plays a major role in traditional myths from different regions of India. In some regions, people believe it to be very inauspicious, even haunted. Other communities protect and worship the tree. It also finds a mention in very old texts. The Mahabharata talks of Bhishma, the pitamah (father), taking shelter under a shalmali tree. The ancient sage Yajnavalkya is believed to have called it one of the trees from hell. Because of its forbidding appearance, with thorns embedded in the trunk, it is also called the tree of Yama (the god of death). The Bhil tribes of Udaipur refuse to sleep on silk-cotton mattresses, believing they may be struck with paralysis. Legend has it that Guru Nanak, the founder of Sikhism, did not think much of the tree, considering its looks deceptive and the fruit useless. Bhai Gurudas, the first scribe of the Guru Granth Sahib, also dismissed the tree. While other fruit-laden trees bent down to the flowing river in humility, offering their fruits to help the birds, he said that this tree illustrated ego and lack of altruism, standing tall and proud, bearing only scentless, nauseating flowers, tasteless fruits and useless leaves.
But the tree is culturally valued in other communities. For people born in the Jyeshtha nakshatra (a lunar star sign associated with the zodiac sign of Scorpio), this tree is considered especially sacred. They are believed to benefit from planting this tree. Some tribes in Rajasthan consider it bad luck to cut this tree down, while others believe that the tree harbours yakshis (female earth spirits who get angry if the tree is cut). The tree is worshipped by childless women, who believe that they will be granted the gift of fertility. However, the most widespread impact perhaps comes from the Holika tradition, where branches or young trees of silk cotton are associated with Prahlada's wicked aunt, Holika, and burnt during Holika Dahan festivities in north India. One study in Udaipur district, in 2007, found close to 2500 trees and branches burnt in a single day. Thus, the sacred traditions associated with the silk-cotton tree can both protect and harm the tree.
The silk cotton is a good tree to plant in cities for many other reasons. It can be planted in degraded soil and flourishes even in very dry conditions, with little water—all it demands is sufficient sunlight as it does not grow well in the shade. It rarely grows on its own in cities, but with planting and a little care it can thrive for decades. Silk-cotton trees in the grounds around the Taj Mahal in Agra and near the Gateway of India in Mumbai offer visitors respite from the baking sun, while decades-old silk-cotton trees provide many parts of Delhi, like the diplomatic avenues of Neeti Marg and the lawns of Teen Murti Bhavan, their characteristic identity.
A number of cities across the world prize the silk-cotton tree. Both the Taiwanese port city of Kaohsiung and the Chinese riverine city of Guangzhou have selected the showy silk-cotton blossom as their city flower. In north-west Vietnam, a number of tourist destinations showcase their centuries-old silk-cotton trees, whose scarlet blossoms dominate the landscape. Local residents believe that the blossoms are a sign that it is time to put away warm blankets—the end of winter. This species is particularly useful in cities given its capacity to reduce overall air pollution and sulphur dioxide content. Despite what Guru Nanak may have thought, the flowers contain a lot of nectar and attract a variety of birds, butterflies, bees and other insects. Thus the silk-cotton acts as a keystone species in cities, supporting many other forms of biodiversity, including langurs and squirrels. Bats and bees nest on the tree and its sharp thorns protect it from stray cows, helping young saplings to flourish.
The silk-cotton fibres form an important component of urban livelihoods, especially for communities in small towns, who continue to be traditionally involved in making mattresses and pillows. Fallen leaves and flowers are also rich in protein, valuable for urban gardeners who want to make vermicompost. It is culturally important to different communities in varied ways—worshipped by some, feared by others. But anyone who has seen the spectacular sight of the large scarlet blossoms of the tree, silhouetted against its spiky, leafless silvery grey branches, cannot fail to have been mesmerized.
Red silk cotton (Bom
bax ceiba)
Description: Large and lofty tree that can grow quite tall. Lower part of the trunk is covered with conical prickles and with a buttressed base. Bark is silvery-grey.
Flowers: Scarlet, showy flowers, with thick, waxy petals. They stand out as the tree is leafless during blooming season.
Fruits: Woody capsule that splits open to reveal silky strands of cotton amidst which small seeds are embedded.
Leaves: Smooth lance-shaped leaflets.
Seasonality: Deciduous tree whose leaves start falling in December and extending into March. Flowering is between January and March while fruiting starts in March and extends into May, with fruit pods ripening and splitting.
Family: Bombacaceae. Members of this family have showy flowers, but also serve commercial and economic purposes.
Origin and distribution: Native to India and widely distributed across the country, except in very arid parts.
FIFTEEN
THE
FELLOWSHIP
OF THE GROVE
Since ancient times, cities have been founded after destroying forests and trees, as told to us in myths, legends and historical narratives. The Khandava forest in the Mahabharata was burnt down by Arjuna and Krishna to establish the city of Indraprastha (believed to be modern-day New Delhi). The medieval town of Bengaluru was built by clearing out a jungle. Alongside this destruction of forests, new urban settlers planted and nurtured trees in and around cities. Groves of fruit-bearing trees seemed to have covered the landscape in different parts of the country, used as sites for the collection of fruit, as well as for community gathering.
Ashoka, the Mauryan emperor, planted mango orchards with wells throughout his kingdom to ensure shade and water for travellers in the third century BC. Mughal rulers Babur, who ruled in the sixteenth century CE, and Dara Shikoh, who came in the seventeenth century CE, were both mango lovers. Their memoirs describe orchards of some of the finest mango trees planted around towns and cities. So favoured was this fruit that Mughal noblemen who raised mango orchards were granted tax waivers. This tradition of planting fruit groves continued into colonial times as well. A number of British gazetteers from the early 1900s mention groves across north India. In Agra, 4 per cent of the land area was covered by groves of mango, jamun, bael and other indigenous fruit. In Jhansi, the tamarind was a favourite tree of the ruling Maratha kings. It was planted widely, encouraged by rent-free grants of land. Lucknow had groves of mango and orchards of ber, covering 22,059 acres in the district in 1866, while Kanpur had several thousand acres covered by mango and mahua. The main civil station of Ganjam (present-day Srikakulam in Andhra Pradesh) was ‘well studded with mango and tamarind topes’ (topes means orchards), while the town of Ellore (today’s Eluru) had extensive groves of toddy. Across the Deccan and the southern peninsula, groves of mango, neem, banyan and tamarind were in abundance.
Cities and Canopies Page 11