Seasons: Monsoon

Orange tubular flowers, continuously, and the sunbirds that follow them.

The southern vasaka — a shade-tolerant shrub with white hooded flowers.

Flowers nearly all year in a warm city, and sunbirds find it within a week.

The wild amla of the southern hills, smaller-fruited and tougher than the orchard kind.

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.

A nitrogen-fixing pioneer of Himalayan landslides and north-eastern jhum fallows.

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

Yellow flower spires and copper seed pods; the summer partner to the gulmohar.

Maroon night flowers on long ropes, then metre-long fruit that alarms everybody.