Waiting for fully opened flowers!!!!!! On Sat, Feb 18, 2012 at 7:34 AM, raman <[email protected]> wrote:
> Mohwa is one of the most important of Indian forest trees, not because it > may possess valuable timber - and it is hardly ever cut for this purpose - > but because of its delicious and nutritive flowers. It is a tree of > abundant growth and, to the people of Central India, it provides their most > important article of food as the flowers can be stored almost indefinitely. > It is large and deciduous with a thick, grey bark, vertically cracked and > wrinkled. Most of the leaves fall from February to April, and during that > time the musky-scented flowers appear. They hang in close bunches of a > dozen or so from the end of the gnarled, grey branchlets. Actually the word > ‘hang’ is incorrect because, when a bunch is inverted, the flower > stalks are sufficiently rigid to maintain their position. These stalks are > green or pink and furry, about 5 cm. long. The plum-coloured calyx is also > furry and divides into four or five lobes; within them lies the globular > corolla, thick, juicy and creamy white. Through small eyelet holes at the > top, the yellow anthers can be seen. The stamens are very short and adhere > to the inner surface of the corolla; the pistil is a long, protruding green > tongue. It is at night that the tree blooms and at dawn each short-lived > flower falls to the ground. A couple of months after the flowering period > the fruit opens. They are fleshy, green berries, quite large and containing > from one to four shiny, brown seeds. > > Raman > -- Regards Dr Balkar Singh Head, Deptt. of Botany and Biotechnology Arya P G College, Panipat Haryana-132103 09416262964
