More and more I find myself looking for plants and flowers that I grew up with south India to fill my northern california garden - I've convinced myself that the mild clime of this area will surely nurture them. Their names and smells are so evocative of how and where I grew up....I love their tamil names - some quite descriptive of the bloom or plant and the others still quite mysteriously named - i suspect that their names have been colloquialized so much that the original has been long lost....At about 5pm every evening without fail, the flower lady Selvi-amma would come to my grandmother's house carrying her small basket of strung gundu-malligai poo (arabian jasmine ), pitchee-poo (maybe pink jasmine - far as I can translate this seems to mean plucking flower - can't be right, can it?), mullai (a close relative of pink jasmine I think - never was sure what the difference between mullai and pitchee was) ), kadambam (marigold) and kanakambaram( don't have any idea what the common english name is - in latin it'sRuellia Tuberosa ).
In summer in madurai, the heat still shimmers over the ground at 5pm though you can just begin to feel the edge of relief. Selvi calls out her characteristic "Yemmmmaaaoooo pooooo" to summon the residents. The neatly coiled strands of malligai nestled in the dampened banana leaves seems to be bursting with perfume which wafts cooly around. Looking back it was such a neat little self-contained eco-system. The flowers are often strung using fibers from the spine of a banana leaf - the basket is liked with fresh banana leaves sprinkled with water -the strands sold by elbow lengths - 1 muzham - are ocoiled and placed in here and covered with more leaves. When a transaction is completed, the requsite length of flowers are placed in a handy sized portion of the banana leaf and tied neatly with the banana fiber. So if she had a good evening, the product , refrigeration system as well as the packaging materials would all be gone.
Pavazha malli (coral jasmine) was a delicate tree that had masses of sweet smelling white petalled, gently spiralling flower with a coral stem. They would drop en masse under the tree it was the prettiest sight. Arali poo (california highway flower or ) was a bush with many magical offerings. The milky white sap (which we were warned early and often was poisonous - I learnt only quite recently this sap is often used in suicides) often doubled for blood (yeah yeah we imagined it was red too) or sauce to pretend-cook the sand and flowerpetal mixtures in ; but more exciting than this - we'd often find crysalises hanging on the undersides of the leaves. The leaves are both strong and flexible. The myriad of colors on the shell of a crysalis are magical....
Nandiya-vattai is a common bush in south India - the closest I've seen here are the white vinca vines -though the nandiya-vattai flowers have delicately serrated edges on the flower petals. No smell though...their buds are nice and fat and make a satisfying pop! if you smash them against your palm.
Idli-poo (ixora) przed by the adults and landscapers for their globular, spiked orange and sometimes white flowers, were hot favourites amongst the kids because of the sweet nectar you could suck out of them and then turn each floweret into a whistle too (until poor thing just split open)...
Lantana - smelly and poky as ever grew easily there. While learning to ride a bike - I did so on a man's full sized bike - the kind that has a bar running from the seat to the handle bar - I remember losing control and unable to get off landed into this huge bush of pink and purple lantana. aargh - haven't had much time for that plant since then. even the shiny black berries, though squishy are noxious! Of course, it's my luck these are abudundant in California
There is this greenish flower - the petals are thick and kind of snake like that has a great smell - the story was that snakes often lived in and around this plant. I only remember that when my mother would buy these flowers she'd only get a couple - but they sure did smell wonderful - quite unlike any other fragrance I've experienced. Can't even recall the tamil name....
A thrilling plant for kids was the common Balsam - much favoured in borders and pots. The flowers were certainly beautiful but it was the seed pods that were the best. they were fat little pods each with about 10 ball-bearing like seeds. Once the seed pod was mature it would start drying up and finally it would pop explosively open flinging the seeds afar. Ingeneous - rocket propelled (someone once likened it to projectile vomiting - unwarranted if you ask me - it's just fabulous). So the trick was to pick the pods that were juuuuuuuuust ready and gently press them - POP! My brother and I spent hours doing this - no doubt helping the plant propogate as well! In England I think these are called Policeman's helmets.
Jevanthi (chrysanthemum) - usually only white and yellow would show up in November or so - they do need the cooler weather. But the star of winter was definitely the December poo (no idea what the english name is -barleria cristata ) - this came in magenta, purple and white. women and girls wore it often in long strands. The magical thing about these flowers is that they did not dry out and brown quickly - so you could wear them for a couple of days by storing them in the fridge. Their more common fate was to be crushed and scattered all over your pillow the next morning after you forgot to unpin them from your hair!
