It’s a season of flowers here. I see a jungle full of flowers as I drive to the office each Monday morning. Palash is everywhere. With its bright saffron flowers, it is the easiest one to notice. But there are other ones too, the ones that you wouldn’t perhaps notice if you didn’t have an eye for trees and flowers.
Shalmali is another easy one to recognize if you know one. One can easily identify it with its uniquely thorny stem and branches. These are not plenty though. I see only two or three Shalmali trees on my way. These days Shalmali is all flowers and no leaves. You can find a Palash anywhere in this jungle, not Shalmali. I want to pull over and go watch the tree from close, take photographs, and share with you all. Morning hours do not permit leisure though. Each minute is measured to reach the office within time. I do have a few pictures of this beautiful tree though, taken more than a decade ago.
I remember two Shalmali trees in Nagpur, both in Ajni. One was just south of the Ajni Railway Reservation Centre, beyond a boundary wall of railway quarters. That was perhaps the first Shalmali tree I ever saw. The second one is near Ajni Square, on the left side of the road as onegoes towards the FCI godowns. It is perhaps on Central Jail land. I wonder if both these trees still exist.
Today is not about Palash or Shalmali though. It is about these beautiful treeful of pink flowers I see on Ring Road, lined up beside the road on the left side going east past and beyond Pratap Nagar Cafe Coffee Day. (The much-famed coffee house does not exist anymore at this location and is another story altogether).I never noticed these flowers all these years and now these trees are such full of them that you cannot unsee. I wanted to stop every time I passed by, but again, I am always in a hurry. But today as I reached Amravati, surprise, I found the same tree and same flowers just a few minutes before I reached work. Here I can go and look, take a few pictures, and use google lens to identify the tree.
It’s an avenue tree planted beside the road near Rukhmini Nagar square, on the left side of the road as one goes toward the square from Bus Stand, near the boundary wall of Science Core ground. It is a medium-sized tree, not as big as the big ones. Though, unlike Shalmali, it still has leaves on it, its flowers are the first thing one would notice. One of these days, I will go walk to it, take some photos, and share with you all.
Corrigendum: I checked my notes from another blog I wrote during those days and the second Shalmali tree I wrote about above, the one in Ajni square, is not a Shalmali, but a Gulmohar instead. So, I remember one Shalmali tree in Nagpur. I vaguely remember seeing a few others in Government Ayurved College woods in Sakkardara, but I certainly did not see flowers there. I also remember seeing one tree in Mumbai, in the open ground in the compound of TCS iON Digital Zone in Powai. This one is numbered as tree number 28, so one can go and check.
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