Eco Walk - What a pleasure!!!

It was a great morning and right on time, Ms Divya Facilitator from Nizhal walked in with necessary papers for Theosophical Society. Mr. Arun from "The School" of TFI, who is the resource person of Nizhal arrived to guide the gathering in the Eco Walk.

The attendees for the Eco Walk were : Mr. Anthony and Family (ABN Amro Bank), Mr. Venkataraman (Equis - PMC), Mr. Sudeep Jain IAS and family (He holds the Guinness Book of world record for planting maximum number of trees in 24 hours - 254000 in Nagapattinam Tamil Nadu), Architect Ms Sujatha Shankar (Sujatha Shankar & Assoc), Architect Shyam (Uma Shankar & Assoc), Architect Jay Prakash Varde and Family, Mr. Arul (CBRE - PMC), Mr. Ved Mishra (SCB), Ms Jha & Family (Tamil Nadu Police), Ms Akila (Social Worker), Ms. Swahilya & Family (Journalist), Architect Rajiv with Kids (Architects Ritu&Rajiv) and Myself with Krishnan, Anish and Sathish. We started the walk at exactly 8 AM and the whole walk ended at 9.30AM although every one still wanted to have more of the information sharing with the Guide Mr. Arun.

Trees seen...
Seesham - dalbergia sishoo
Laburnum species ( with stick like pods)- kids collector item
Laegestromia (with purple/white flowers)
Bauhenia
Fern tree fillicum decipiens
Nagalingam tree -- the kids collected the canon balls
Tectonia grandis......the teak
Albezia lebbek (shaving brush tree!)
Rain tree
Tree of life or paradise ... a tree whose wood will sink
Sterculia....a favorite with spiders

Gulmohar... who does not know but delonix regia
A tree with a most interesting leaf system
Mimusops elengi - bakul locally
The copper pod tree - peltophorum
Indian cork tree - millingtonia hortensis

A couple of varieties of jamun - syzygium cumini
Cordia trees
A ficus which had all but engulfed a bakul in a deadly embrace
in the middle of it all, observed a tree pie, cookle, a kingfisher...and the call of a shikara and lots of fun.

The following is the story of the walk in pictures... I am sure that you will all enjoy.

The Rain Tree... typically you see the under growth in all the rain tree forests....The False Rudraksha....
Looking for the Tree Pie

Kids collecting the pods...
The Green canopy...

The seven spot cockroach and the BumChum below for the company....

The inviting gateway to the forest in the Theosophical Society...

The Kids collecting Canon Balls of the Nagalingam Tree
Passing by the theosophical society's admin block...

We came across a very interesting tree, where the leaves start formation from bulb like flower / fruit... Mr. Arun holding that bulb, which most of insisted that its a flower or a fruit of the tree..

This is how it looks initially....

And in few days it turns into something like this where it looks like the strands of cotton twisted together...
Then it unfurls into being this... Light green fresh leaves...Finally a full fledge leaves...
Another one of the interesting tree from Australia... It only has leaves once in its life time at the very beginning of its life... This tree what you see is not having any leaves but the modified stem that looks like leaves as you see in this picture. There are no leaves in this tree... Interesting!!!
The Tree and the Camera man (He is from a prominent news paper The Indian Express)...

How both are focussed at us... ???

The most interesting find of the morning (atleast for me) This flower looks like a thousand headed serpent bent on the Shiva Lingam inside the hood of the serpent. To surprise of us all, there was actually an exact replica of a Shiva Lingam under that hood.

The flowers really looks beautiful and to the surprise of all this tree called Nagalingam in Tamil Nadu has come from Guyana, West Indies.

Amazing Nature...

Thanks goes on to Mr. Arun, Ms. Divya and Ms. Shobha Menon of Nizhal and Architect Rajiv as the facilitator as well as the man behind the program for giving us a wonderful time.

Shashi