City - Hyderabad State - ANDHRA PRADESH Country - India
About
This is the second Terminalia species(on my portfolio) with a less spectacular bark (http://www.usefilm.com/image/310232.html) but plenty of other excellent attributes. It is a common shady deciduous backyard tree in India with large dark green leaves which sometimes turn into varied colorful shades of red. While still green, the leaves are stitched together to make excellent dining plates for festive occasions in the rural India. The fruits are oval in shape, when young or unripe they're green in color. As they ripen, the pericarp (the outer layer) develops an attractive red rose color and tastes great. Once the sweet pulpy pericarp is enjoyed, a kid's ritual used to be, to crack open the hard shell to get the tasty seed. Another added "cool feature" I remember as a kid, is the temporary all-natural red stain left in the mouth. I tell my kids today, the joy of sticking red tongues out to show off, would beat anyday "blowing bubble gum" or eating junk food, if you ask me :0)!!
Wow! love that Terminalia catappa. Cool shot with a great wash of light. We call it kath-badam (wood nut) in bengali. I have recently bought a piece of real estate which has a terminalia. From my childhood I was fascinated by some more aspects of this tree other than enjoying the fruits. i) The fall color of the leaves, breathtaking shades of red, yellow and brown. ii) The fruit that looks like an eye. iii) The branches, which are almost perpendicular to the trunk made me think that if I could build a platform on those radial branches and have a tree house over there! iv) Lot of bats visit this tree and its nice to watch them flying down and alighting on the branches at nightfall. Cheers
(Dear, I was not hiding in any forest. Only lot of work pressure (that included the beautiful travels across my motherland too) kept me away from regular visits to usefilm.)
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{K:32538} 6/30/2004