Goals: food

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 wild date of the plains, tapped for gur and fruiting freely.

Fishtail palm of the Ghats and the north-east, tapped for sap and sago.

The wild banana of the north-east — seedy fruit, but flowers and stem are food.

The ghost chilli of Nagaland — a genuine regional speciality, and ferocious.

A few canes in a corner give juice, gur and a green screen by October.

A creeping tidal palm of eastern deltas, roofing houses and sweetening sap.

Tamil Nadu’s state tree — sap, fruit, leaf and timber from one palm.

The tejpatta of north Indian cooking — a hill tree, not the Mediterranean bay.