Growing spaces: ground

Grown for the seed that swells in falooda and summer sherbets.

The wild date of the plains, tapped for gur and fruiting freely.

Fishtail palm of the Ghats and the north-east, tapped for sap and sago.

The cane of eastern furniture — a spiny climbing palm of wet forest.

The wild banana of the north-east — seedy fruit, but flowers and stem are food.

East Indian lemongrass, distilled in the north-east for citral oil.

The silver-plumed grass of autumn riverbanks — Durga Puja in plant form.

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

Cut-and-carry fodder that regrows every forty days for years.

A Sundarbans mangrove with night flowers that bats pollinate.