A casual morning ride it was… and we discovered this beauty. Beauty lies in an individual’s perception, they say. Yup, kinda true. This beauty blossoms and attracts the other species during May month and hence it was named “Mayflower tree”. It blossoms as Scarlet orange Gulmohars- an ornamental species. Species name: Delonix Regia( family: Fabaceae). A native of Madagascar. Dominantly found in India.
“By discovering Nature we discover ourselves”
Looking at this tree takes us back to the time when we used to scavenge the fallen flowers during the early days of the academic year in school-early June. The petals have a unique structure to them extending long, but quite feeble. Hence when fallen, only the sepals remain. The sepals are the part which encloses the petals of the flower in the bottom. Usually they are green in color. But these Gulmohars have a yellow and red sepal. The red part can be scratched a bit and stuck to our nails. This gave us the effect of witch nails or long nails. For kids who were never allowed to have long nails this seemed like a “quick life hack”. This was the reason the scavenging took place, every kid wanted those long nails to scare some younger kids or their own friends.
Interestingly we found that this tree also has got medicinal properties and in south Asian countries it is used in the treatment of diabetes, arthritis, etc. Nature has immense healing quality right? It is our duty to preserve our beautiful nature.
Let’s learn more about our nature… Stay tuned
Post by Anisha Rajan and Vihaan