Regions: Himalaya & the hills

The smoked black cardamom of Sikkim, grown under alder shade.

The slender hill bamboo of Uttarakhand, cut for baskets and matting.

A peppery salad green for a shady tray of running or frequently changed water.

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

A hardier deciduous hibiscus for the hills, flowering through the monsoon.

Pink blossom in November, out of season by every other measure — the hill wild cherry.

A Himalayan cherry with long fruit racemes that thrushes and bulbuls strip in weeks.

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

The banj oak that holds the water in a Himalayan hillside; slow, dense and vital.

A nitrogen-fixing pioneer of Himalayan landslides and north-eastern jhum fallows.