Regions: south

The fastest usable material on earth; one clump supplies poles for years.

Sacred, enormous and the most valuable bird tree in any Indian city.

The tree that becomes a grove; only for parks, campuses and village greens.

Figs in bunches straight off the trunk, feeding birds, bats and monkeys.

Handsome, thorny and productive on poor dry soil; good in a big pot.

Evergreen, wind-firm and cropping twice a year on the coasts.

The tree the coasts are built on — water, kernel, oil, thatch and shade.

Slim palm of the wet south-west and north-east, grown in dense stands.

A coastal tree that fruits on poor laterite where almost nothing else does.

The kokum of the Konkan — a slim tree with fruit that makes the summer drink.