Goals: Herbs & healing

The tejpatta of the sub-Himalayan tract — three-veined leaves, straight off the tree.

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.

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

The true ashoka — orange flower clusters on a small shade-loving tree of wet forest.

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

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

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

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

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