Regions: north

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.

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.

The wild date of the plains, tapped for gur and fruiting freely.

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

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

Desi cotton — the indigenous species, hardier than the imported kinds.

A scrambling hill plant whose root gives a lasting red dye.