Regions: west

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.

The pod of the khejri — the vegetable that carries the Thar through summer.

A leafless thorny desert shrub with scarlet flowers and pickling berries.

Lasoda — sticky green fruit pickled across Rajasthan and Gujarat.

A creeping mat for the wet edge of a terrace pond or a bowl garden.

A floating fern that fixes nitrogen — fertiliser and fodder that grows itself.

Malabar tamarind — the sour rind of Konkan and Kerala cooking.

A few canes in a corner give juice, gur and a green screen by October.