Plants

Plants around us, their names and their stories.

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    A morning at Hatirjheel

    A tree I could not name, glimpsed on the way home from my cousin’s house, sent me back to Hatirjheel alone the next morning. I walked its whole length, from palash to bottlebrush, looking for it.

    5 min read

  • Rain lilies come with the monsoon

    After the first monsoon showers, pink, white and yellow rain lilies pop up all over Curzon Hall. A closer look at these familiar little flowers.

    2 min read

  • Hastikarna, a guest of the monsoon

    Leaves as big as an elephant’s ears, flower heads like broccoli: dhol samudra, or hastikarna, turns up with the monsoon rains and vanishes underground before winter.

    3 min read

  • Curzon Hall through a plant lover’s eyes

    Leaves like joined twins, fruits like microphones, cannonballs hanging from a tree: a plant lover’s walk through Curzon Hall, one tree at a time.

    11 min read

  • Foxtail orchids in an unexpected place

    Eight garlands of pink flowers hanging from a tree in an ordinary village orchard: an unexpected meeting with the foxtail orchid, a beauty we are slowly losing.

    7 min read

  • Growing up with akondo, the crown flower

    For six years I used a plant as a step to climb my school wall, never knowing it was akondo, the crown flower. A story of fruits, white blooms and endless wishes.

    10 min read

  • Snap ginger, the flower that shares cardamom’s name

    I first glimpsed this flower behind a garden wall at Mirpur. Later it bloomed in our own department garden, on plants I had always taken for bamboo.

    4 min read

  • Ritha, the tree I still don’t really know

    The nameplate at the Mirpur Botanical Garden said ritha, but to me it looked like a mahogany! The story of a friendly argument I started on purpose.

    3 min read

  • Yes, there really is an incense tree

    As a schoolboy I loved the scent drifting out of a temple on my way to school. Years later, a friend pointed at a tall tree and said: this is the dhoop tree!

    5 min read

  • Time for sukhdarshan, the spider lily

    White flowers spread like an octopus, magenta buds that would not open, and a worrying name, “poison bulb”: my hunt for the spider lilies on campus.

    6 min read