Regions: East India

Khus — a grass whose roots hold a slope together and scent a summer room.

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

The silver-plumed grass of autumn riverbanks — Durga Puja in plant form.

A few canes in a corner give juice, gur and a green screen by October.

Cut-and-carry fodder that regrows every forty days for years.

A Sundarbans mangrove with night flowers that bats pollinate.

Red February cups feeding every bird in the neighbourhood at once.

The tejpatta of north Indian cooking — a hill tree, not the Mediterranean bay.

A creeping pepper of the eastern and southern forests, with catkin-like spikes.

The paan vine — grown in shaded enclosures across Bengal and the east.