Flowering Trees

Flowering trees I knew

Ratnakar, New Delhi 110001

Date: 14^th February, 2010

Three trees that always draw my attention in the month of February are mango tree, red color flower bearing tree and bamboo tree. Since last week I am able to witness some changes in scenario from the terrace. Mango trees in vicinity are flowering. Also I see another trees and changes taking place therein such that red colored flower bearing tree too is flowering. The period of 15 days from Shivratri to holi brings lot of seasonal changes. Mango tree flowers attract large number of honey bees.

One of the most beautiful gifts of the nature is numerous categories of green trees, plants, creepers, grasses, etc. Each tree in the natural environment undergoes cyclic progress. That is, tree starts its life from its sprouting stage, attain stem of its own, grows to maturity through growth of roots, attaining height, growth of trunk size, increase in number of branches, increase in full size and number of leaves, etc. There are over 50,000 varieties of trees. The trees as we know release oxygen in the atmosphere during day time and carbon dioxide in night time. Its photosynthesis system leads to green coloration of all of its leaves. The seasonal changes makes tree to shred its leaves, bear new much brighter green leaves, then comes flowering, finally fruits bearing and so on. In secondary level schools teacher tells to students to make collection of leaves of different trees and study them well so that students are able to identify trees from the leaves, using its features like laminar structure, appearance, leave’s length, bread, texture, colour, its configuration, etc.

For attaining school daily, I used to walk over 10 to 15 km distance from my village though thick forest and involved crossing of a river before reaching a nearby town. This routine travel was continued for 5 years for my schooling from 5^th standard to 10^th standard. As it was a daily routine it was of no significance then. The walking stretch passed through fields, where rice, wheat and bajara were sown and harvested if different seasons. What was common then walking stretch of about half kilometer was passing beneath mango trees in large numbers as if it looked like mango forest. When the sky was covered by the clouds mango trees’ shadows were so thick that it was almost like night and often was very scary to travel from that area.

There were over 30 species of over 100 varieties of mango trees in India. The mango trees were over 50 to 100 feet high and may be over 200 years old. Every year huge mango harvest was made by farmers. Mangos are used for pickle when they are raw but pickle quality mangos are different from fruit juice mangos. Raw mangos are very sour as compared to riped mangos which are very sweet and juicy. Mango has vitamins A, C and D. While walking through mango trees, often I used to pick up few mangoes that felt on ground due to picking of birds, or fallen by wind, or due to reaping. Flowers of mango are red and yellow color, have a very unique and sweet fragrance. Whole tee gets covered with red-yellow colored flowers as if tree has became bride with its unique color on all branches. The trees are auctioned for harvesting when mango tree bears flower thus farmer get in advance the money they need.

India, has over 2,471,000 acres (1,000,000 ha) of mangos growing land (70% of its fruit-growing area) produces 65% of the world's mango crop. India produces over 12 million MT of mangos. Alphonse mangos are most popular. Maharashtra produces over 125,000 MT. I presume 2010 will bring huge mango harvest and will be cheaper too.