Regions: West India

Orange-yellow flowers whose scent carries across a whole garden at dusk.

The sap palm of Bengal and the Deccan, tapped in winter for nolen gur.

A woody climber with fringed white-and-yellow flowers and a heavy sweet scent.

Red brushes of stamens on drooping branches; a hardy naturalised garden tree.

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.

Bare branches and orange claws of flower in February — the tree that announces Holi.

Crocodile-bark and big leathery leaves; the tasar silk tree of central India.

The true ashoka — orange flower clusters on a small shade-loving tree of wet forest.

The narrow green column planted along every Indian driveway and boundary wall.