Regions: North India

A scrambling roadside shrub with palmate leaves and small blue flower spikes.

The resin pine of the lower Himalaya, and the needle litter that makes those fires.

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.

The Himalayan butter tree, giving cooking fat and an enormous honey flow.

Sweet basil — indigenous cultivation across India long before its pizza career.

Grown for the seed that swells in falooda and summer sherbets.

A wild desert melon of Rajasthan, dried and powdered as a souring agent.