Regions: East India

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

A creeping mat for the wet edge of a terrace pond or a bowl garden.

Singhara — a floating annual grown in ponds and tanks across the north and east.

Bihar’s pond crop — prickly floating leaves and the popped seed of fasting food.

A floating fern that fixes nitrogen — fertiliser and fodder that grows itself.

Bare branches and orange claws of flower in February — the tree that announces Holi.

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

Crocodile-bark and big leathery leaves; the tasar silk tree of central India.

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.