Goals: food

The sap palm of Bengal and the Deccan, tapped in winter for nolen gur.

Sticky green fruit for the Rajasthani pickle jar, on a tough small tree.

A slender Western Ghats evergreen with purple fruit that souring curries depend on.

The forest ancestor of the orchard mango, still fruiting in eastern hill forest.

Sweet basil — indigenous cultivation across India long before its pizza career.

Grown for the seed that swells in falooda and summer sherbets.

A wild desert melon of Rajasthan, dried and powdered as a souring agent.

The pod of the khejri — the vegetable that carries the Thar through summer.

A leafless thorny desert shrub with scarlet flowers and pickling berries.

Lasoda — sticky green fruit pickled across Rajasthan and Gujarat.