I am not an eco-man but has become one.
Yes, tea is not a native plant.
It was native to China.
British planters stole it from China and gradually brought tea through India to CEYLON to destroy our biodiversity.
Recent catastrophe and untold destruction and landslides are direct result of Tea Industry.
Tea is a labour intensive.
The tea puckers are paid poor from the time of the British.
Please revisit the BBC panorama presentation on British Tea Industry.
Also revisit the book by Ranil Senanayake.
He is a nephew of Dudley Senanayake and a planter who had done a thesis on how we should reorganize our ecosystem.
Nobody including UNP listened to him and he has gone to oblivion.
I am bit different to Ranil Senanayake but follow Panadura "Koss Mama" or Koss Ata Mama" or Arthur Vincent Dias (pronounced as Ddies), having seen Mahinda Rajapkasa's goons felling 11 jack fruit trees around my neighborhood within an year of him gaining power.
Jack fruit tree is called Artocarpus hererophilus and there is a single jack fruit tree in the Peradeniya Botanical Garden which is a walking distance from our house in Panideniya.
I still do not know what destruction befell our neighborhood recently.
There was a single breadfruit tree in front of our house and that was taken down by our neighbour to expand the makeshift parking place for his cars.
He is a car vendor.
He buys rackety dilapidated cars from a weekly auction in Kandy and do some temporary work and painting on them and resell them.
I hated the black soot and the painting which affected us daily.
There was surface well from which I used to fetch water for my 22 odd fish tanks.
Thankfully, by that time all the fish tanks were dispensed with except for the two big water tanks for Guppy fish and water lillies.
I am pretty sure this portion slipped away during the recent catastrophe. In fact, I wanted to buy this portion and actually requested it from the owner without quoting a price but she never asked me.
Yes, it was close call and I am not there to witness it.
I believe, the access road may have slipped away and no vehicle can pass through, until fully repaired. I do not think the guys have enough money (may be they are already in debt) in the bank to do repairs and they invariably would ask money from me, too.
The current government would not pay any compensation saying that this portion is a private land.
However, Ranil Wickramsinghe got permission from the owners to lay "concrete on" a portion of the access road and it was in bad state, when I left Ceylon.
I should end this with bread fruit tree.
Its botanical name is Artocarpus artilis.
Eight (8) thousand years ago our prehistoric ancestors, not from India were known to have had a wild bread fruit tree that had gone into extinction.
The current bread fruit tree is imported variety from Oceania.
The breadfruit roots grow from the stem (suckers) and spread out and they run shallow.
The worse tree to grow is the Bo Tree or the pipal tree which drains water and kill all other trees around it.
Only Na Tree can survive near a pipal tree.
They often coexist.
The botanical name for the "Na" tree, is Mesua ferrea, also known by its synonym Mesua nagassarium, and is commonly called Ceylon Ironwood or Cobra's Saffron.
Pipal or Bodhi trees or Bo trees
Every year when I clean (risky job) the gutters of our roof and I find one or two Bo or pipal trees growing there.
They are called "Kaputu Bo".
I uproot them and plant them in a suitable large pot.
Currently, I have several in the rooftop garden.
They are my weather indicators.
I pick the dry leaves that fall from the pipal trees in the rooftop garden and put them in a plastic box with silica.
This year of Yahapalanaya, I had none of Kaputu Bo. This season even the crows were hungry without pipal seeds.
I went and looked at near "Nagara Sabha Kunu Bakkies" or refuse dumps where the crows come for roosting and did not find any pipal saplings.
There were a few in between cement structures. How the pipal seeds germinate in unfathomable places is a mystery. All of the young plants (Ksoutu Bo) were at least one year old.
The inclement weather had nasty effect on birds including crows. Their purge or dropping did not have any pipal seeds to germinate, I believe.
Deities and Prayers
They say prayers are very well heard but never acted upon by the deities.The simple fact is, those deities are impotent never omnipotent as it is believed.
Come to plant life, they are multi-potent, only if you care them with respect and living space.
Long before I became a plant watcher to predict the inclement weather, I looked at the sky (cloud watching was a pastime of mine) and saw the clouds turning in opposite direction (this is what our yesteryear farmers did) and I did a quick overall of my rooftop garden expecting a rainy spell. We have too monsoons one heavy but the other relative dry.I never believed in our meteorology department.
I had a very young relative in the meteorology department and she feeds me with the inside information. The indicator placed inside the University was never read. They fear coming in due to nasty past experiences when they did come.
Guys used to urinate on them.
What a top education?
Five plants (mostly not local) succumbed during the dry spell.
One coffee plant,
One cocoa plant (again foreign species thanks to British),
Two Karapincha (Thailand) with full of aroma and
One white sandalwood plant perished.
I always buy two specimens expecting this scenario. If both specimens die, I won't buy them again. One other reason is that the plant vendors in Ceylon in public auction, only sell the dormant or diseased plants (heavily spayed with chemicals, to last the sale period).
Beware!
These plants are for the shade of my water plants. Even finch would build nests, if I do not (masterly inactivity on my part, let the weather takes its toll) visit them and let them go to wilderness.
My bio-indicator of the dry spell is the pipal or the Bo trees picked up from gutters (municipality and our rooftop gutter) germinated from crow droppings.
They start dropping their leaves, and the roots go in search for scarce water.
Apart from my cascading arrangement of water plants other arrangement is the small piloted plot, on one end there, simulating the "wet zone" and on the other end there is the "dry zone".
The pipal plants occupy the dry zone.
In the beginning without any agricultural or academic training (I am a simple biologist), I started it as a simple roof top laboratory.
I drop a stem of pineapple or a pipal tree sapling picked up in from gutter in the Kandy city, in between pots of water plants.
To see how they stand the awful weather without watering but sparingly water them, if I feel they are in their "end of the tether".
From plant experimenter to a plant lover,
I have graduated in 15 years.
I must say, I have no financial interests and abhor selling plants.
The simple love for caring for them.
Now the caring for them comes not from me.
The tiny honey wild bee (not the regular bee already gone extinct) is the number one.
The dragon flies invest their genetic pool amongst the water plants.
The butterflies are plenty.
Except for ladybirds (haven't seen them for 4 decades).
I have a water plant which very rarely display (may be three years ago) its beautiful flower.
I found it a rightful place and today it had a single flower.
My experiment (full ofbexcitement) was "pitched up" by a single red dragon fly on the dried up sandalwood tree (which was transferred to the wet zone recently and is beginning to sprout young shoots).By the way "wet zone" was created by leaking main overhead tank.
I decided to take some pictures.
There were three water lilies with flowers.
I had another lily with a yellow flower (most likely a foreign variety) which did not bloom for 15 years. It sprouts from its yam when the time is right, otherwise goes into hibernation.
Mind you, I never wished for any of these to happen.
The plants sensed and coordinated their activities to interact with simple wild beings which we call insects and spray Baygon to kill them.
Who needs gods or deities to entertain?
Mind you I hate people who pluck flowers and lay on altars (for not seen or not to be seen gods) as offers for gods.
These not seen gods have contributed nothing to their well being!
