Goals: Grow food

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

Lasoda — sticky green fruit pickled across Rajasthan and Gujarat.

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 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.

Two spices from one fruit — nutmeg and mace — on the wettest coasts.