Growing spaces: ground

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.

Yongchak — long flat pods eaten across Manipur and Nagaland.

A small southern shrub with white flowers, long used for skin preparations.

Sesame-like seeds used across the eastern Himalaya in chutney and oil.

A dark-stemmed shrub of the wet coasts with traditional joint-pain uses.

Timur — the numbing hill pepper of the eastern Himalaya, on a thorny shrub.

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