Creamy Peacock Flower Tree - White Gulmohar

On the morning walk today, Srikar and I, we went slightly off the usual path. We took a couple of new turns, walked through a couple of fences. Went up a small hill and down the other side. Then another hill.

From the top, we could see three familiar paths, one each side. We collected a few Pongamia pods to plant in the nursery. Then we took a path down the hill, to join one of the paths that would take us back to farm hill.

Once we hit the familiar path, we took right instead of left. A little along the path, a left instead of the usual right, on to a cart track. As if we were searching for something.

We could see the path stretching ahead of us to the next hill and we knew it would wind round to farm hill. That’s when we found what we weren’t looking for.

A tree of White Gulmohar, Delonix Elata. We had seen a few of these trees around. The last time we saw another tree along another path, it had only flowers. And the flowers are beautiful.

This tree looked, big, dense, and inviting. We rushed to it as if it was calling us.

The flowers were beautiful, the sky was blue, and it had fruits. And the dry fruits on the ground, many of them had seeds! We walked around picking up the fruits and collecting seeds, only the fat ones.

The flower

Seeds

Seed Pods

The other side of the tree, we saw, was a shrine, that is when we noticed the sacred fig intertwined with this tree. The stems were nearly the same color, difficult to tell apart.

The shrine

It was magical, I am telling you, finding the beautiful, sacred tree, while we weren’t looking for it. And now we have seeds, wild ones, to put in the nursery!

Oh, by the way, the tree is also called Creamy Peacock Flower Tree!