Thank you Gurucharani, Nidhan ji, Balkarji: thank you for responding.... since I am not a botanist nor a taxonomist... I rely on observing "every" possible feature that seems relevant... and am a serious subscriber to the edict of Liberty Hyde Bailey, co-founder of the American Society for Horticultural Science [ASHS], that "an awareness and appreciation of plants began with salient visual encounters with plants and direct observation of their interesting attributes."
And so when I first encountered the white flowers of Carissa macrocarpa... i did not know what it was, but they were fragrant when first opening... that started my interest.. but I did not go any further, a few weeks later I found a red berry hiding in the leaves, trying to get to it to look my hand was scratched mercilessly ... first I thought I was bit by something...it was such an active scratch... which I now know to be the weird double thorns, that you have depicted well in your photo: <https://groups.google.com/group/indiantreepix/attach/9b77e579fc059012/Carissa-carandas-LA-4.jpg?hl=en&part=9&view=1> *Carissa-carandas-LA-4.jpg* in the link https://groups.google.com/group/indiantreepix/browse_thread/thread/31145e1ab206c491/11ab84bbbfe55caf?hl=en&lnk=gst&q=Carissa#11ab84bbbfe55caf and this sort of thorn pair does not occur in karambada// karamcha... That year five years ago it took me several days to possibly identify my pink-violet-red fruit that once was a white flower, and its parent plant was willing to bite me with forked thorns.... I filed my pictures originally as" Karamda relative"... about a week later I knew it was most likely Carissa macrocarpa.... from visual clues provided at various reliable sites on the net and google images.... I don't think I had known of flowers of India then... nor of eflora... now that I do, I am learning by leaps and bound... and am photographing stuff all over.... but have to file them and then learn to downsize so they can be posted.... bear with me... I'll still learn the art... and do it...it would make our conversations more interesting. thank you, Usha di
