Regions: East India

Brown flower spikes over strap leaves; the reed that cleans a village pond.

The tall reed of Indian riverbanks, and the standard plant for a reed-bed filter.

The bamboo that covers Mizoram, and whose mass flowering brings the rat floods.

Yellow culms striped green; the ornamental clumping bamboo of Indian gardens.

Silver plumes across the riverbanks after the monsoon; the kans of the floodplain.

The deep red night-flowering lily of eastern tanks and temple ponds.

Grows on water or wet mud and crops every fortnight through the monsoon.

The same lotus, grown in deep mud for the crisp rhizome of the Kashmiri kitchen.

Big heart leaves on a wet corner; the corm below and the leaf above both go to the pot.

Enormous upright leaves for a wet shaded corner — architecture rather than a crop.