Goals: healing

Timur — the numbing hill pepper of the eastern Himalaya, on a thorny shrub.

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

A small southern shrub with white flowers, long used for skin preparations.

A dark-stemmed shrub of the wet coasts with traditional joint-pain uses.

East Indian lemongrass, distilled in the north-east for citral oil.

Khus — a grass whose roots hold a slope together and scent a summer room.

A creeping pepper of the eastern and southern forests, with catkin-like spikes.

A scrambling hill plant whose root gives a lasting red dye.

Reetha — the washing fruit of the sub-Himalayan tract, from a good shade tree.

A thorny southern climber whose pods have washed hair for centuries.