Unknowns

Unknown territory to me, the Sivaliks, the foothills of the Himalayas, still retain much of their botanical diversity. About 700 meters above sea level, near the village of Kotabagh, I watched two green magpies dart from a tree, and glide over the valley below. The glorious sight of their green bodies and outspread maroon wings catching the light lifted my spirits as I continued photographing unknown and unidentifiable flowers. The tiny white flowers that you see above were my first find after that. The buds look like an Alternanthera (joyweed) but the flowers are completely different. Anyone know this?

How hard could identifying this be? Bright red and four petalled. There can’t be too many families with four petalled flowers, I imagined. Not so. They pop up among gentians (Gentianaceae), willow herbs (Onagraceae), evening primroses (Rublaceae), even among Melastomes (Melastomataceae). The number of petals turns out to be as uninformative about the identity of a plant as its colour. So I still don’t know what this one should be called.

Then there was this small flowering tree, with spectacular clusters of flowers. Himalayan botany was explored very thoroughly in the 19th century. So it should not have been hard to identify them. Unfortunately, the older books are now out of print, so you need access to specialist libraries to consult them. New books have not been written, and web sites specializing in these plants are inadequate. Another fine mess we have gotten into.

So I was happy to find a portion of a cliff brightened by the small flowers of the common hill borage (Cynoglossum coelestinum). This was familiar to me from the Sahyadris. In fact, I’d seen it just the previous week in a walk around Mahabaleshwar. When the world seems unfamiliar, it is nice to see someone you recognize, even if it is not exactly a friend. All these flowers were growing within ten paces of each other, along with invasive Lantana and morning glories.