Goals: biodiversity

A tough dry-forest tree with papery winged seeds that blanket the ground in March.

The scented heartwood tree of the southern Deccan — a hemiparasite that needs a host.

An enormous umbrella crown of ferny leaves that folds shut before rain.

The red-timbered endemic of the Andhra hills; slow, valuable and heavily poached.

Cream powder-puff flowers, then papery pods that rattle all winter.

A scrambling roadside shrub with palmate leaves and small blue flower spikes.

Bare branches and orange claws of flower in February — the tree that announces Holi.

Fat red flowers on a bare grey trunk, then pods of cotton that blow down every street.

Crocodile-bark and big leathery leaves; the tasar silk tree of central India.

A large deciduous tree of the Deccan, tapped traditionally for its red kino gum.