These four beautiful native plants light up the dreary winter in India with their beautiful flowers.
While winter is famous for a diverse variety of migratory birds that land on Indian shores, there are also some plants that flower during this season. Here are four winter-blooming plants commonly seen in India that add colour and life during the cold.
Night-flowering jasmine (Parijat)
Roam around any garden or orchard in your neighbourhood at night, and you will notice an enticingly sweet and lingering fragrance. This is the specialty of the Night-Flowering Jasmine shrub. The beautiful white flowers, which are shaped like stars, adorn gardens and orchards all over India. Soon, streets will be decorated by a white-and-orange carpet when these flowers bloom and fall off. This en masse flowering only in early winter: September to December! Apart from butterflies, did you know an interesting fact about how these flowers are pollinated? Thrips are tiny, slender nocturnal insects that use their needle-like mouths to suck plant tissue, pollinating the Parijat in the process!
Purple Orchid Tree (Kaniar)
The Kaniar flower looks like something out of a fairy tale! The five smooth long petals look like butterfly wings. The flowers are a delightful mix of purple and pink with faint white streaks and a touch of golden yellow at the heart. When these flowers bloom from September to November, they turn the whole tree into a magical, unmissable explosion of colour! During this time, the tree is abuzz with bees, its pollinator buddies! It is popular with farmers as goat feed too!
Kydia (Pula)
With lantern-shaped white flowers boasting a lovely yellow inner side, the flowers of this plant bloom in winter. They are the favourite of many bees and flies pollinating them. Butterflies like White Branded Ace munch on the plant as caterpillars, while adults of Chocolate Pansy and Angled Pierrot suck on its delicious nectar. Even the largest land mammal, the massive elephant, loves to eat its green stems! This tree thrives in both the dry conditions of Central India and the heavy rainfall of the Western Ghats, adapting to the toughest environments effortlessly!
Country Mallow (Bala)
Commonly called Country Mallow or Bala, this tiny but vital native herb is found across grasslands and pastures in India. Its small, bright yellow flowers bloom mainly in the late monsoon and early winter, infusing warm colours into the surroundings. Bala’s nectar attracts insects like butterflies, bees and wasps, while the flowers provide food for beetles. The leaves are heart-shaped and fuzzy. Bees like the Stingless Bee and Indian Honey Bee pollinate it; always reliable “beeing” on the job!
What are your plans for November? Use this planner to figure out what to do this month.
Learn about this Chinese myth about how the giant Pan Gu was instrumental in forming our Earth.
What happens to all the food you munch on through the day? Find out with this interactive task.
You’re super hungry and you wolf down some yummy snacks. Ever wondered what happens to the food after you swallow it? Whenever you take a bite of food and send it down, your body gets to work to break it down. This process is called digestion. When food is broken down, your body can get all the nutrients and energy it needs.
Here are the highlights in the process:
Mouth: When you chew food, it gets mixed with saliva and the digestion process begins.
Esophagus: This muscular tube moves food from the mouth to the stomach.
Stomach: Here, food is mixed with stomach acids and enzymes to further break it down.
Small intestine: Nutrients are absorbed into the bloodstream here. This organ has three sections: duodenum, jejunum, and ileum.
Large intestine: In this section, water and salts are absorbed from the remaining undigested food, forming solid waste.
Anus: This is the final exit point for waste from the body.
Based on what you have just read, can you arrange the below parts of your body in the order in which food passes through them?
Here’s this week’s fix of six questions to help you build your general knowledge. Try this quiz now.
Six questions to get you thinking! Can you get them all correct?
Here are 10 items that are often found in playgrounds. Spot them all in the grid.
Time for some fun and games. You are at a playground and have to identify the various things that you use. Use the text and picture clue to find the word in the grid.
Images: Canva
Eon, epoch, era, period… what do these words mean? And how are they connected with the Earth’s history? This video tells you more.
If you have it in you to write your own play, but are not sure how to go about it, check out this guide.
Awesome characters, exciting scenes, fascinating dialogues… what does it take to write your own play? Scroll through these slides for a step-by-step guide.
This is the story of three siblings and their adventures after their father suddenly disappears. However, you cannot read it here because there are mistakes in the text. Can you find them?
This is an excerpt from the book The Railway Children by E. Nesbit. There has been a mix up and the opening lines of the book have been found to have many mistakes. Can you identify them?
This one’s for cricket lovers! How familiar are you with the terms used in the game? Find out by cracking this crossword.
Howzat? This crossword is all about cricket! Can you fill it up correctly?