We stood there, taking in the scene, trying to fold in our bodies to avoid damage to the flowers. Impatiens lawii was all around us, the flower pink with a purple throat—the color of a rich, syrupy cocktail you have with friends when the sun is going down. Then there were purple flowers, layered with a lighter centre—Utricularia, a bladderwort species. They stood next to tiny white flowers which were reminiscent of carrot blossoms. Yellow, daisy-like Linum mysorense nodded gently. Near them were “mickey mouse” flowers—yellow petalled with red dots, looking like the ears of an animated childhood friend, like the plant would start speaking. Malabar larks whipped into the blooms, their wings a blur, their crest an exclamation. Frogs sat in rock pools. Crabs hid under grass. We were on the Kaas plateau in Maharashtra, and everything was urgently and vividly alive.
Every year in the post-monsoon time, around September, the lateritic plateaus of Western Ghats burst into dramatic blossom. Formed by continuous volcanic deposition, many of these plateaus appear flat, and so are also called tablelands. In summer, they look bare, even barren. Wind whips the land and the sun is pitiless. The soil is thin, appearing almost non-existent. But that is the nature of the area: harshness is its feature. And as usually is the case, this is a twin to abundance. Come monsoon, the plateaus soak up moisture, helped along by the porosity of the rocks. Streams gurgle. Rock pools high up the slope well up again. And the few centimetres of soil reveal riches—native wild flowers, colourful and mesmerizing, full of the energy of little things that don’t have a long time to live.
And what plants they are. Between Kaas, Mahabaleshwar and Panchgani, we spotted marvels. The pretty pink impatiens—named so because their seed pods explode impatiently when touched—were ubiquitous. You may have another kind of impatiens in your garden. But on the plateaus, there were also fewer familiar plants. One had a striking pink flower, with arms splaying out in the aspect of an underwater octopus. The tentacles were covered with sticky drops, and the syrup on the drops gleamed with the promise of dense, luminous perfection. It was like pulling the sun into a glass jar, or seeing an heirloom moonstone in an old cupboard. This is the Indian sundew, a plant that shows teeth. Or to be more specific, a plant that eats insects— lured in by that fabulous “dew”. The numerous purple flowers running over the plateau were also insectivorous— bladderworts with “bladder” like portions which snagged insects. There were other plants that were parasites, yet other which were epiphytes— orchids with delicate, ephemeral blooms that took turns flowering, depending on the month. In the rock pools, we saw the mist reflected whenever it stopped raining. A leech or two probed the air like a heat-seeking missile. Endemic plants grew in precarious places—the Konkan pinda with its white flowers was on the edge of the cliff in Panchgani. And the Flemingia nilgheriensis and Delphinium malabaricum, also endemics, had complex clusters of dazzling purple flowers. They grew with the forbearance of something which has adapted to its very own corner of the world.
We may not realise it, but plants chart our lives. We eat them, we gift them on dates, we are felicitated by them on stage, we walk in their shade. But mostly, we leave plants alone; lavishing our attention on things that talk back to us, or things that seem to be listening. The rock plateaus of the Western Ghats, also called the Sahyadris, have plants that don’t really need us. Like the best of wild flowers, in the aspect of the rare Himalayan Brahmakamal, or southern India’s glory lily—they do best without manure, without artificial watering, without swathes of pesticides. They contain generosities which reveal the true nature of the land: that these are places that support not just life, but thriving of life. That these are places that display the true turnings of the season, the true spectrum of nature—bare at one time, fabulously verdant in another.
Like most nature geeks, I confess I have a special interest in carnivorous plants, in a creature that looks like one thing but behaves like another. In Satyajit Ray’s horror story The Hungry Septopus, Ray writes about a man who collects these plants. In this pursuit—a genteel chase which becomes an obsession—he brings home a plant that grows into a human-sized being, always hungry. At a certain time of the day, the powerful plant produces a smell—a kind of seductive fragrance that makes others lose their wits. You’ll have to read the story for the rest. But in the real world, sign me up for plateaus full of insect-eating plants. Because this means the plant evolved to fill a niche that others were not occupying, its own space on the mountains, so to speak.
Seeing masses of Utricularia is a reminder that there is an entire world in the roots, where the “bladders” are, and that water-saturated monsoon soil has many hidden mysteries.
Tourists who visit these areas do so to enjoy the flowers, the climate, and their own photos between the blossoms. Seldom do they come to see the value of the endemic flower itself, the bluster of the wind constantly bearing down on the rock, the resilience of the runnelled floor. Neither is it well-known that not all plateaus in the world produce masses of flowers, that many of these flowers are found only in that region, or even that locality; that this vegetation supports animals which are found only on that mountain or that point.
It is these blind spots that have led the authorities to misclassify lateritic plateaus or rock faces as wastelands; that have led misguided steps to dump soil on the land, or to build over it. This needs urgent correction. These areas have survived centuries, we must ensure they survive our plans. These plants and their habitats don’t need our care; but they certainly need us to leave them alone, and give them a chance to live unencumbered by invasive plants, concrete and mass tourism.
Whether we pay attention or not, plants present a daisy-chain of importance. They show us the places that support life, and through their own bodies, they support other creatures. They show their deep knowledge of the land, unlocking memories of natural abundance; of how the place may have looked decades, tens of decades ago.
At this time of the year, plants are not the side show but the main event in the Western Ghats. May we remember their names and remember to tread softly.
As we climb down the tableland, I ask myself: Can we keep growing like plants? Can we open our minds to the possibility that something that looks bare can also be fruitful? Can we, in essence, allow a small, non-verbal plant to change our view of the world?
Neha Sinha is a conservation biologist and author of Wild and Wilful: Tales of 15 Iconic Indian Species.
