Tall and imposing, with a bark so pale that it could put the tusks of elephants to shame, the Ghost is a silent witness to the passage of time in the forest.
Finding a Ghost
If you were to walk in a seasonal dry forest — the kind that has tall grasses on the floor, a scraggly canopy, and trees that shed their leaves as the year ends — you will very likely find a Ghost. Botanists call it Sterculia urens. But let’s just stick to Ghost Tree, shall we?
A Ghost begins its life
Trees have been around for a long time, for millions of years. And for millions of years, most trees have started their lives as a seed. The Ghost is no different. The seed of a Ghost is promptly evicted from its cradle once it turns chocolate-brown and shiny — somewhat like an upturned coffee bean. It waits patiently on the forest floor to be nurtured by the rain and the sun before taking its first tentative steps into the adventure called life.
A tiny Ghost
The first thing a Ghost sproutling must do is send roots below, into the soil, to find life-giving water. Then it creates its very first leaves out of the gift-packets of food its mother provided when making the seed. These first leaves are like photosynthesis training-wheels. The next set of leaves will look similar to those of its mother like the webbed footprint of some aquatic creature in soft mud.
The trials of a Ghost
A young ghost must survive the harsh realities of the forest floor. It must grow tall, so that the sun is always within reach. It must become resilient, so that no wind, or footfall of large beasts, or even fire, can destroy it. It must combat disease and withstand the gnawings of hungry beings. It must grow in girth, so that one day it can be a pillar in the community of forest trees.
The Ghost grows up...
The forest is not very kind to young Ghosts. But that lucky one (among hundreds) that manages to survive life's perils grows up to be a chronicler of the forest. An adult Ghost is a calendar-keeper, a scribe of the seasons. With the first sign of rain-lessness, it sheds its large webbed-foot leaves, and remains bald through the dry season. Then, just before the first drops of rain dampen the parched soil, the Ghost will send out new leaves, cosily swaddled in tree-fur. This Ghost will live on for tens of years, wearing the scars of droughts and fires as medals of honour.
…and flowers for the first time
A truly grown-up Ghost can make more Ghosts. And that requires producing flowers when the leaves have fallen for the dry season. For such a large tree, the Ghost’s flowers are apologetically small. But ask the bees that visit the Ghost for a shot of sugar (in exchange for pollen), and they will tell you that the delicious flowers are quite a sight for their hardworking eyes.
Not such Ghostly fruits!
If there is one thing more remarkable about the Ghost’s appearance than its pale-white bark, it is its bright red fruits. Clustered at branch-ends, clothed in luxuriant velvet, splayed like the toes of upside-down geckoes, the Ghost’s fruits are the cradles in which new Ghosts are nurtured.
Ghosts rise, Ghosts end
The Ghost’s fruits will explode one day, catapulting the upturned-coffee-bean seeds onto the forest floor, to chart their own unique course in life and complete the circle of life. And when a new Ghost rises from the soil, somewhere in the forest (at that very moment, perhaps), an ancient Ghost might drop its last leaf with a silent sigh.
FURTHER READS:
SeasonWatch is an India-based citizen science project. It aims at understanding the seasonality of trees, and the effects of climate change on this seasonality, across India. Students from more than 1200 schools and more than 1100 interested individuals contribute weekly information on tree species that are commonly found across the country. Anyone can become a citizen scientist with SeasonWatch by registering as a contributor and registering as many trees as one wants, for observation at www.seasonwatch.in. There is also a handy Android app on Playstore, to help with making observations on-the-go.
CREDITS:
Author: Geetha Ramaswami, Programme Manager, SeasonWatch
Photos:
A Ghost Tree (cover) - Dhiraj Bhaisare
Forest with the Ghost Tree, Seedling, New Leaves, Flowers, Fruits, Tree with old leaves - Dinesh Valke
Seeds, Sapling - Shubhada Nikharge, Goregaon, Mumbai
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