Seasons: Monsoon

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

White flowers with orange tubes that open at night and are on the ground by dawn.

The tejpatta of the sub-Himalayan tract — three-veined leaves, straight off the tree.

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.

Singhara — a floating annual grown in ponds and tanks across the north and east.