Floral battles: past and present

by Priya Rangan

As children growing up in Dehra Dun several decades before it became the capital of the state of Uttarakhand in the western Indian Himalayas, we spent a fair amount of time playing outdoors. It was a small town at the time, so there was plenty of outdoors, open space with some variety of vegetation, home gardens or, if you ventured a little further out, farm plots. Most afternoons, we’d spend time rushing about in the playground, and when tiring of it, wander along the canals and by-lanes in the neighbourhood, chattering away. Sometimes, as we walked along lanes lined with lantana hedges, we’d pluck a whole lot of flowers, pull the little florettes off the flower-heads and throw these at each other. As far as we knew, that’s what lantana was for, spontaneous floral confetti battles.

Seeing lantana in BRT Hills Reserve areas during our recent field visit brought back these childhood memories.