Nature-Walk the Mumbai Trees-Part 2

Hi good day ppl!
Everyone loved the Tree walk post. Thank you for the overwhelming response. So here is the 2nd part of the post.
Read the 1st part here:
Nature-Walk the Mumbai Trees-Part 1

Bogan Vel:
Its real name: Bougainvillea. Its a creeper & has beautiful paper type pink flowers. In this pic Lahar & Satwiki are showing that- actually the flower is the white small ones inside, the pink are the outer covering of the flower. These creepers have thorns. They are not natives of India but from South America.

Bogan Vel

Mango Tree:
Its an indigenous tree. Its fruit is called aam,amba,..mango. The English word mango probably originated from the Malayalam word "maanga" , then via Portuguese as manga. It has several uses apart from its delicious fruit which ripens in summer. There are a lot of varieties of these plants. It is considered auspicious in India.

Story: There was once a king who had a beautiful queen. There was a demoness who was jealous of the queens beauty. So once when the queen was in a forest the demoness started chasing her. The queen then transformed herself into a beautiful lotus & hid in a lake. The demoness couldnt come in water & waited at the edge of the lake. So this continued for many days, until the king came searching for his queen in the forest. When the king saw this lotus he wanted to take it to gift his queen. When the queen tried coming out of the lake, the demoness got angry & cursed her. The queen turned into ash & lay scattered in the forest. A few years later a tree rose from the ashes which bore a delicious smelling fruit. Again the king still in his search for his missing queen came to the forest, saw the fruit, plucked it to show his people. When he reached his kingdom and showed the people the fruit, everyone wanted to touch it. In the passing of the fruit, it fell to the ground & out came the queen :).

Mango Tree

Christmas tree: Its from Brazil. Its real name is "New Caledonia Pine". We commonly know it as Christmas tree. It is always leaning towards one side, never straight ;). Their fruits are like cones.

Christmas Tree

Rubber plant: This is used as a house plant. It can grow to 200feet in the open, but when indoors, you can control its growth. It has pointed leaves. It is from the family of Rubber tree. Its sap is fatal of infected.
Story: It was brought to India, thinking its Rubber will be useful. But on processing, they found the rubber quality to be not good. So the plant was left to grow unattended.

Rubber plant

Cork Tree: Its called Australian Cork, Casuarina, Beef wood tree. Its an Indian native tree. It has a dark trunk, branches like bird feather, leaves like tail of horse. Its wood is hard, has greater salinity, used for fuel. It is a wind breaker. These are found & grown around sea shores. This tree is a quick-growing one and lives for quite a long period. Its fruit is like a hard cone. Read more here.
Story:
The villages of South India were saved during Tsunami due to the this tree line along its shores.

Cork Tree

We have these around our school and used the leaves to form garlands,.. The leaves can be broken but they join back, like magic ;)

More trees & their info coming up. Hope you liked this part 2 of the series.

Let us know.
Bye. Tc. Have a great week ahead !