17 Nov

at rangaswamy betta

An early morning trip on a May morning did not turned out to be unfruitful at all. A small group of four planned a morning to be a good time to visit dry deciduous forests towards south of Bangalore. Rangaswamy betta being one of the closest hill of considerable vegetation and elevation, we decided it would be a good place to look for some orchids, if lucky we might get to see some in bloom as well.

The morning dive to the top of the hill in the misty morning is a experience by itself. We could spot quite a few plants of Vanda testacea in bloom on certain Terminalia trees en-route. Having a temple at the top of the hill, a bit of crowd is expected at the top. Since our chosen timing was early morning for the visit there were hardly any people around and that made it a quiet place.

tree in the morning

As we proceeded further towards the top of the hill, we could see the trees having Luisia plants. On our one of the earlier visits we were able to see the plants. But our time of visit was of a non-flowering season for the Luisia species there. However this time around the we were lucky enough to be on time for the bloom. We could actually see Luisia zeylanica in full bloom all over a tree. This brought something wonderful to our morning experience on the hill top.

Once we were content with the photographs and observations of the flowers we moved a further to a place where we had seen a Polystachya concreta plant on our earlier visit. We we reached this jack fruit tree just next to the temple, to our dismay we saw the very branch which hosted the single plant had been cut off. That ended our search for this plant. Apparently being close to temple and God did not prove to be safe enough for this species there.

Tree and Luisia

We went around further taking more photographs of the place. As the Sun started coming up it was time for us to head back and get back to the city. Having seen both Luisia flowers and tree branch cut, it was outing which ended with a mixed feeling of gain and loss, mostly loss!

16 Aug

roadkill

no blood spread! no last night’s speedy vehicle! and definitely no one tried to cross the road! But still there is blood, blood on our hands!

Roadkill

At least six species of orchids on the fallen tree next to road!

Some destructions are the way of Nature keep things in balance, some like roads, plantations, neglects are not. Trees fall all the time. Some of old age, some ‘cos of the calamities like flood, lightning etc. And nowadays mostly due to another type of (un)natural calamity, human activity.

Sometimes you get a feeling that all the ‘thinking’ or ‘will make you smart’ knowledge by the education without foresight and not considering the bigger picture and connection is alienating the very species which is supposed to be a good example of evolutionary process if anyone interested enough to study. When do we stop confusing Knowledge for Wisdom?!

There seems to be another dimension to this act; that of the discipline and self respect! It appears to be lacking more and more as the days go by. We do things just because we can! or rather we don’t have that control over the self to stop as soon as we realise it. Or we have left out the self-respect and the pride of being sensible out and away.

There is a gap in understanding which leads us to not to see the connection between each of the species in the ecosystem. In the top-down view of building understanding unless one spends considerable amount of time reading, most importantly listening to one’s surrounding, it is next to impossible to attain that state of understanding and harmony with surrounding. Blame it on the forgetfulness and ‘ill-respect to traditional knowledge’ of the society or blame it on the selfish economy driven pseudo communities!

The anthropological knowledge developed when the race was small enough where it could sustain easily itself not being thought about now. What’s more, its been blatantly forgotten or overridden. The key to connection and survival, has been with us all the time and it appears like we have ignored it quite nicely as well, no matter what’s our excuse be!

24 May

elephant and orchid

what would an elephant know about an orchid? Forget the question if elephant thinks and thinks about itself as something!! Probably it would be that green thingy on top of that big green thingy. Again not sure if that green is green! May be it has its own way of calling things and its own way with them. Elephant would treat everything else same and would continue to live its “big” way all the time just as. Wonder if the planet is full of elephants and their number starts to increase and with their limited knowledge of “connectedness” which makes them think they know everything.. etc. Also Wonder if they would still see the connection.. theirs and everything to everything else around them.

Well, elephants or humans … story is the same!!

anyways here is a Vanda from Elephant land.
vanda spathulata