Wordless Wednesday - What's inside the fig?

Photo: Sandeep Somasekharan

See all Wordless Wednesday posts

Encounter: The Copper Pod Tree

Though not as grandly picturesque as the Golden Shower or the Flame of the Forest, the Copper Pod tree makes its yellow-crowned presence felt all over the flower-carpeted ground

It’s a humid May forenoon and even in the shade there is no respite from sweat. The sea, a mere 100 m away from the Bharathi Park in Pondicherry, is a low rumble over the cries of playing kids and the croaking of crows. It continues to part with salty vapour under the scorching sun, pushing up the humidity further as noon approaches. 


Except for the kids and the crows, everything is in a tropical stupor unless you count the constant drip of yellow flowers from the trees. The park is a virtual monoculture of the Copper Pod tree (Peltophorum pterocarpum) and they have taken cue of approaching summer to erupt in a huge flush. The trees were planted as a part of a planned effort when the park was commissioned and they have now grown huge and old. The entire place is under their canopy and the dainty yellow flowers are everywhere. 


They carelessly adorn the Nandi statuette in the park’s corner, drop on incipient termite mounds (the termites do well to ignore them), cover the tops of autorickshaws on the side roads, tumble down the gnarled trunks and piling up in its crevices and fissures. They impart a yellow border to the stone slabs of the garden path and drape a yellow carpet over any space not taken by lethargic picnickers. The tree itself is not flamboyant partly since it's not leafless when in flower – it lacks the visual grandeur of the Laburnum, Gulmohar and Flame of the Forest – but its impact on the surroundings is far more visual. 


Unlike the cassias the flowers retain the bright yellow colour even when fallen and also as they dry. The tree also answers to other names like Golden Flame, Rusty Shield-bearer, Yellow Flamboyant, Yellow Flame, and is called iyalvagi in Tamil. It’s a deciduous tree and grows to 15 – 20 m in height, but is known to grow much larger. The seed pods are translucent coppery-red when young, maturing to copper and finally black – each with up to 4 seeds. The tree flowers copiously in early summer but bears flowers throughout the year, sometimes getting a second flush in September. It has a dense spreading crown and is common as a shade tree in additional to its use as an ornamental avenue tree. The leaves are small and mimosa-like and the seed is winged. 

The Copper Pod is a native of tropical Southeast Asia and is found all over the region from India through Bangladesh, Thailand, Cambodia, Papua New Guinea and Australia. It’s been introduced to Pakistan, Nigeria, US (Hawaii and Florida), Philippines, etc for purely ornamental reasons. In its natural habitat it is found in the teak forests of Java and along beaches, mangroves and woodlands. 


Come summer, the ground at every corner and avenue where the Copper Pod had been allowed to grow and mature bears the yellow two-dimensional stamp, its outlines tracing out the trees’ canopy. More often one notices the tree by this nuage jaune sur la terre – the yellow cloud on the earth.

Text and Photographs by Sahastrarashmi 
Photograph of the Copper Pod Avenue by Rohit Tewari
Watercolour by Kirti Chandak

On the Wing - The Great Hornbill

Nothing can prepare you for the awe-inspiring spectacle of a Great Hornbill, flying wild and free in its ancient forests

The swooshing sound of the Great Hornbills' wingsweeps resonates in the silence of the forest

The Great Hornbill (Buceros bicornis) is found in the Western Ghats and the Himalayan foothills in India as well as in the thick rainforests of Sumatra, the Malay Peninsula and Thailand extending north all the way up to Nagaland in India, as well as Nepal.

These large omnivorous birds do not have many natural predators. However, they are near threatened due to habitat loss from excessive deforestation as well as from poaching (their meat is considered unsuitable for consumption) as their large bills are coveted as trophies. Apart from its huge bill and colorful plumage, the bird is recognizable for its loud and sonorous call, which has earned it the Malayalam name “Malamuzhakki” -- one who makes the hills reverberate. 

 Great Hornbills are known to be monogamous and have a peculiar breeding habit that restricts their ability to proliferate in large numbers. Hornbill pairs partner for life and the death of either partner results in the surviving partner going mate-less for the rest of its life.

Exhibiting great dexterity, a Great Hornbill tosses a berry in the air before swallowing it

While hornbills have a lifespan of around 35 years or more, due to their selective breeding and nesting habits this longevity does not offer a significant advantage for their survival. Females nest in tree hollows while the male helps seal the cavity from outside. The male takes the responsibility of providing food to the incarcerated female. The male makes several daily trips to gather fruits, berries, reptiles and insects for the female. The male stores the fruits in the crop (a sac in its throat) and regurgitates them at the nest, following this regimen until the chick has grown significantly and it is time for the female to emerge from the nest cavity. Since the female has to rely on the male during this time, his death due to hunting or poaching would result in the death of the female and the offspring as well. Great Hornbills are known to return to the same tree cavities year after year and the loss of the tree means the pair would have difficulty in breeding again. There are few trees that satisfy the nesting requirement of hornbills and deforestation has become a major reason for the bird's dwindling numbers. 

Seeing the decline in numbers of the Great Hornbill, several conservation programs have been commenced to protect and revive this intriguing species.

Text: Anand Yegnaswami

Photos: Sandeep Somasekharan

(See Sandy's blog post on his meeting with the Great Hornbill)


These lovely images are best printed with HP Laserjet

Gluttony in the Timber Graveyard

The Timber Depot in Dandeli presents a feast for both bird and birdwatcher, and then some rumination

If a man walks in the woods for love of them half of each day, he is in danger of being regarded as a loafer. But if he spends his days as a speculator, shearing off those woods and making the earth bald before her time, he is deemed an industrious and enterprising citizen.
- Henry David Thoreau

The Timber Depot at Dandeli is a living graveyard, if that oxymoron makes any sense. It stands right in the heart of this sylvan north Karnataka town, which the virile Kali river cleaves in two as it hurries to the sea about a hundred kilometres away at Karwar. One hot afternoon in April, we crossed a bridge over the river (gawking at the heft of an enormous marsh crocodile basking on an islet) and arrived at the timber depot. We had barely entered when it struck us that this place had more hornbills than we had collectively bargained for. 

An enormous mugger basks in the afternoon sun beside the swollen Kali river

It also struck us that the Karnataka Forest Department, like forest departments everywhere in India, exists for the primary purpose of generating revenue from natural resources. For everything else besides timber was an aside, not even meriting a rounding error in its account books. 

In the timber depot large trees, bare of leaves but laden with rotund yellow fruit, stood like fairytale giants, their tentacled fingers stretching skyward. At their feet lay corpses of their kith and kin, their sawn trunks stacked in neat heaps on the dry earth. From towering living things they had been degraded to commodities. Now they were known as rosewood, jackwood, teakwood – wood being the operative suffix. 

A Malabar Grey Hornbill takes a burp break

The evening light softened the mood, lending to the recumbent logs a sobering burnish. Above me, the canopies were aflutter with so much avian activity that I had trouble deciding where to look. We were just recovering from the surfeit of Malabar Pied Hornbills, which were ubiquitous, and gazing with satiated boredom upon flocks of Malabar Grey Hornbills. Glossy-black male Asian Koels and their speckled mates, White-cheeked and Coppersmith Barbets, Plum-headed Parakeets, Pompadour Green Pigeons and Chestnut-tailed Starlings feasted on the cornucopia of yellow fruit, barely shuffling at the disturbance caused by our gawking selves. 

A female Pompadour Green Pigeon makes love to its meal

A Coppersmith Barbet appears to be lost in thought before it takes another bite

Against the relentless symphony of cicadas an Indian Roller sallied about, flaunting its brilliant cerulean hues in vain as we ignored it for the hornbills. A troop of Hanuman Langurs, comprising overgrown adult males, subadults and females with infants, pillaged the trees of fruit and leaves. Giant squirrels stuffed their mouths. Mynas and crows hung around, unable to resist the opportunity to dig in. 


What was this manna that got the entire animal kingdom in raptures, I wondered. I picked up a fallen fruit and bit into it. It was tough-rinded but juicy, not sweet but leaning towards sour, and otherwise unremarkable. It left an acidic aftertaste. I spat it out.

A pair of Malabar Giant Squirrels were delightful to watch as they ate meditatively in the canopy

Yet, with so much to behold, the trees and their supine carcasses haunted my thoughts. Did this charming evening spent at this necropolis signify something more: perhaps the oncoming eventide for all of our great old-growth forests and their guardians, the hornbills? 

As my eyes wandered about the yard, I picked out signs of humanity – the gaudy saris of women ambling down the depot's main thoroughfare presented hopeful hues against the sombre dullness of the trees, and I saw the simple joys of companionship in the resigned contentment of an elderly couple using a hefty log as a park bench. 

Perhaps this forest represented much more than it actually stood for – it was a landmark of nature's resilience, her unstinting will to push on in despite the looming spectre of imminent loss that the great darkness of human civilization would inevitably bring. And then, after our time, perhaps the forest's soul shall be rekindled again, gilded by the hopeful rays of a new sunrise. 

We bade farewell to the sleeping logs before sunset as the sounds of the great feast echoed behind us -- the last suppertime squabbles of the hornbills and the frantic whoops of the langurs as they settled domestic tiffs. There is still a good hour to go before lights out, the birds seemed to think. We might as well eat.

The sleepers that lived and died wait, the far advanced
are to go on in their turns, and the far behind
are to come on in their turns,
The diverse shall be no less diverse, but they shall
flow and unite
--they unite now.


Gluttony in the Timber Graveyard from Green Ogre on Vimeo.


From Sleepers by Walt Whitman

Tree or no tree, who gives a fig?

A fig tree in fruit is a forest in itself: every creature in the vicinity is attracted to the sprawling canopy to eat the ripe red fruits, or the fruit-eaters. Sadly, these lovely fig trees are disappearing with our appetite for wider roads

Ripening fruit on a fig tree

Fig trees (Ficus sp) are valuable sources of food for many birds and animals. In an age when fruit trees have turned into cash crops restricted to orchards, with guards stationed to keep birds away, these trees, which provide tiny fruits that ripen to a rich red and house thousands of tiny seeds, become life-givers for birds and mammals. When they are not fruiting, the trees' thick canopies provide safe haven for several species. When the fruits ripen you can hear the clamour of a hundred birds feasting from a long way off.


I have seen a number of fig trees in and around Mysore, but the one that most inhabits my memory is the huge tree near my village in Karukutty, Ernakulam district, Kerala. That tree is believed to be 500 years old and hosts a sarppakkavu -- a shrine dedicated to serpent spirits. My grandfather told me that it was an atthi-maram -- Malayalam for fig tree, though I never saw it in fruit in the days I spent with my grandparents. 


It was nevertheless an amazing tree. Its branches and roots were barely distinguishable from each other. Long strands hung down from the boughs, slowly growing towards the ground. On touching the ground they turned into pillar-like struts supporting the superstructure of the tree. And in this way the tree would branch out and occupy a fair acreage of land.

The Ficus tree at Karukutty

Though I have never seen the fruits of the tree at Karukutty, the ones in Mysore have more than compensated for my loss. There is a huge tree near the smoking zone at Infosys and there are other trees I have seen at my regular birding haunts. I have seen them spread new leaves, sprout tiny ripe fruits, and some others meet their ends - either through natural causes, or at the hands of humans.

A Chestnut-tailed Starling eyes its next morsel

The first casualty I can remember is one near Mysore's Outer Ring Road. This tree had a deep hollow that was home to a Spotted Owlet. The canopy played host to Chestnut-tailed Starlings, Common Mynas, Rose-ringed Parakeets, Brahminy Kites and, at times, a pair of Oriental Honey Buzzards. 


One morning when we arrived, it simply wasn't there -- all that remained was a stump. For no reason that was apparent, the tree had been cut down and the plot where it stood remains empty even today. I have seen shoots emerge from the still-standing trunk but it will take years for it to regain its past glory -- perhaps more than my lifetime, and that is if it is allowed to stand for that long. 


Some trees, like the one on the shore of Lingambudhi Lake, has been spared the axe since it stands in the compound of a temple.

A Coppersmith Barbet attempts the seemingly impossible

Another one that I shall remember was a fig tree that used to stand near Hebbal Lake in Mysore. It was a majestic tree and bore smaller fruits than that of the Banyan (Ficus bengalensis) but, unfortunately, I never got round to identifying it. It was the roost of purple herons and I have even spotted a Booted Eagle hiding in the thick branches. Last June we found the tree fallen, its trunk brutally snapped by heavy winds that mark the advent of the monsoon.

A contented Golden Oriole in a fig tree laden with fruit

With the widening of the Ring Road in Mysore two fig trees beside the road have been felled. As the city grows, many more are likely to fall prey to development. And the birds that depend on these trees for food will be driven further and further away. And then, sadly, we shall refer to them all in past tense.


Text and photos by Sandeep Somasekharan