Regions: North-East India

A tuberous legume of Meghalaya, eaten raw and crisp with salt and mustard oil.

Hard glossy grain used as food, as beads and as a brewing grain in the hills.

A rosette epiphyte that grows on a tree fork or a shaded wall bracket.

A white-backed fern that colonises damp walls and cut slopes on its own.

Fan-shaped leaflets on black wiry stalks — the fern of a shaded bathroom window.

A climbing orchid that must be hand-pollinated flower by flower, at dawn.

The vine that made the Malabar coast; needs a tree to climb and constant humidity.

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

Small upright fruit on a woody perennial that crops for years in the hills.

The tree bean of Manipur — long flat pods with a pungent unmistakable smell.