Talk by Pradeep Krishen

Duration: 01:31:05; Volume: 0.008; Words per Minute: 3.337

I write about plants. I write about trees. I started doing this about 15 years ago. And I started as an undergrad. I'm not a trained botanist or a biologist.

But I now continue to write about trees. I wrote a book about Denny's trees about six years ago.

And I also plant plants in slightly specialized ways.

I tend to work on projects where we're dealing with native plants.

And I also tend to work in slightly stressed habitats.

But I found that if you ask somebody about Delhi's native trees, you say, well, do you know what Delhi's native trees are? Most people would scratch their heads and maybe come up with two or three trees that they think possibly are native to, but they're not very sure.

So it's a subject that a lot of people are not very okay with. And the reason, of course, is that if you start thinking about what Delhi's native ecology is, you start wondering where to begin.

Because what is Delhi's context? You know, is it the one scrub? Is the ridge what Delhi is about? Does it have affinities with eastern Rajasthan, with southern Punjab, with Haryana? You know, it's quite muddy, actually, the field.

And I found that when you show people native trees and you introduce native trees to people, it's a very good way to get a grasp of what Delhi's native ecology is like.

Now, I put together something like 30-odd trees here. The list of native trees is actually much longer. It's about 60, just under 60 trees that I can be reasonably sure were once native to Delhi.

I'm not showing all of them because they come to a very long show.

So with these 30, I'm going to invite you all to feel free to please ask questions while we're showing stuff, to come up with comments.

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