Growing spaces: ground

A tall hill-forest tree with pinnate leaves and scented pink-tinged timber.

The plane tree of Kashmir, planted for four centuries and unmistakable in autumn.

Long soft needles in fives; the pine of the mid-Himalayan slopes.

The resin pine of the lower Himalaya, and the needle litter that makes those fires.

The banj oak that holds the water in a Himalayan hillside; slow, dense and vital.

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

Big palmate leaves and white flower candles in the western Himalayan valleys.

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.