Goals: healing

The black nightshade of monsoon fields — a leafy green in the east, a weed elsewhere.

A tiny monsoon herb that appears in every wet pot, with fruit strung under the leaf.

An intensely bitter Himalayan herb of mid-altitude meadows, slow and particular.

The lichen of the spice box — not planted, but a reason to keep old trees standing.

A hill herb of stream banks with aromatic roots and heads of small white flowers.

Camphor basil — a big grey-green bush that fills a terrace with scent.

A riverbank giant with pale bark — a tree for a campus or a colony park, not a pot.

Feathery-leaved and drought-hardy; one grafted tree feeds a household through winter.

One of the three fruits of triphala; a large deciduous tree of the sub-Himalayan tract.

The third triphala fruit, from a broad-crowned tree of dry deciduous forest.