kilometres can totally change the landscape

I don't actually blog. But enrolling in BIOL 3290 - PLANT ECOLOGY facilitated me to write this first one. I looked around various articles & newspapers to grab a topic to share with you, YES! one related to ecology. But then I thought, I should be more natural and write about the place where I am now!

Two weeks ago, I travelled to Kerala by road which is one of the exciting trips I ever had. Two cars, 11 people, one destination and Yes! it was family time. The cause was my sister’s marriage. Everything happened so quickly until the moment I was at a tea garden in Kumily. The Mountains there are never ending with plantations of tea and coffee. A hill station where you go up, you feel like there is a sea of fresh & cool air thrown at you. At this place we can watch every step of the process including cultivation, plucking and the processing in factories and can gain hands on experience. The plantation style is a strange one with the real-dwarf trees, a mixture of miniature forests and massive green covers. The Camelia family requires dry climate for higher quality harvests whereas higher altitudes can also offer better yield. Another thing I learnt there is that soil should be deep, permeable and loose. The plantation is usually carried out on sloping ground for natural drainage as tea plants cannot survive stagnant water.

I think now everyone of you can feel how I felt. We left kumily the next day to our next stop, SAVANTWADI which is a small town in sindhudurg district of Maharashtra. This place nearly comes in the Goa - Maharashtra border and is a place where cashew nut grows quite favourably. Both Kerala and Maharashtra falls under the tropical moist forest biome which is only one out of total seven biomes in Indian subcontinent.

Savantwadi is a great place to visit with a beautiful lake and multiple gardens. Most importantly, my family owns some acres of land to grow some banana's, rubber, and cashews. Rubber tree (Hevea brasiliensis) grows tall to around 20-30 metres in height and yields latex after 7 years of cultivation. Rubber is a coherent elastic solid obtained from latex of a number of tropical trees of which Hevea brasiliensis is the most important. The thing I observed at the place was the rubber trees grown at my farm didn't grow as it was expected to grow.

After I asked the workers there, what the reason was? , they told me various reasons. Firstly, there is a wild deer which attacks the trees abnormally. it used its horns to rub the trees from the bottom destroying the stems effectively. These wildlife attacks can impact hugely and some measures need to be taken to prevent that. Other thing which they helped me notice was that leaves are quite greenish but, plants are not showing their growing ability in terms of height which is a major question? maybe it is due to the biogeographic conditions. More to explore at this place ...

Finally I was at my home in Surat, Gujarat after a day. I travelled to and from Kerala by road ~3726 km, yes it's a lot. But I wouldn't have understood the beauty and importance of various aspects of plant ecology without this trip. People are posting a lot about deforestation and urbanization but let me give you this positive vibe, there are places around the world which do offer us a view towards sustainable future and belief!