Regions: East India

The chandni — pinwheel white flowers, glossy leaves and constant flowering in shade.

A woody climber with fringed white-and-yellow flowers and a heavy sweet scent.

Yellow flower spires and copper seed pods; the summer partner to the gulmohar.

The forest ancestor of the orchard mango, still fruiting in eastern hill forest.

Glossy drooping new leaves in pink, then white flowers with a gold centre.

Orange-yellow flowers whose scent carries across a whole garden at dusk.

White flowers with orange tubes that open at night and are on the ground by dawn.

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

The sap palm of Bengal and the Deccan, tapped in winter for nolen gur.

Fat red flowers on a bare grey trunk, then pods of cotton that blow down every street.