Four years ago, sometime in September when
I had picked up a sapling of Kachnar (Bauhinia variegata Linn.) from outside my office and planted in the garden of my office the same evening I had
hoped that it will grow and yield beautiful pink flowers in March-April. When
the plant was one foot tall, a roaming cow chewed it up leaving only a twig in
the soil. I was dismayed but as soon as the rainy season set in it starting
showing signs of life and a few days later a couple of green shoots appeared on
its top. The stem cells had worked. Thereafter, I protected it with a cage and
now it is 12 feet tall small shrub.
This year it has yielded hundreds of
pink colored flowers- very tender and beautiful on which the insects roam the
whole day picking up nectar. There is no such plant as this in the
Neighborhood, not in the entire sector zone of HUDA in Rohtak. I have regrets
for the horticulture department, which did never think of planting flowering
trees that yield beautiful flowers during the summer season. Dr. Mahender Singh
Randhawa, ICS, who was Commissioner of UT of Chandigarh, had the idea
implemented for Chandigarh and nowadays one can see hundreds of trees on both
sides of the roads that are laden with flowers of yellow, pink and blue colors.
Definitely, the sense of aesthetics in modern horticulturists had died.
Kachnar is not only a flowering Indian
tree but has lots of aesthetical as well as medicinal properties that have been
elaborated in the Reviews on Indian Medicinal Plants, Volume 4 (Ba-By)
published in 2004 as series by the Indian Council of Medical Research. It was
priced Rs.620/- ($40).
However, my house premises looks
decorated with this flower laden three. My son Sunil has taken a few
photographs of the flowers, a few of which are posted here for viewing and
appreciation by friends.
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