A thorny desert tree inspired villagers to give their lives defending it
In 1730 a Rajasthani maharaja sent men to cut khejri trees near Jodhpur for a new palace. Villagers led by Amrita Devi refused to let them, and 363 people died trying to protect the grove. Two and a half centuries later their stand helped spark India's Chipko tree-protection movement.
Prosopis cineraria, a member of the pea family, goes by many names: ghaf in the Gulf, khejri in Rajasthan, shami, jammi or jand elsewhere in India. It is native to dry lands stretching from Yemen and Saudi Arabia through Iran to Pakistan and India, and has also taken root in parts of Indonesia. The tree stays small, generally three to five metres, with thorny branches, feathery compound leaves and little creamy-yellow flowers followed by seed pods.
Its survival skills are remarkable. It grows where rain totals as little as 15 cm a year, tolerates salty and alkaline soils, and its presence signals a deep water table below. Bahrain's famous Tree of Life, about 400 years old, stands alone in desert with no obvious water source. The United Arab Emirates made the ghaf its national tree and runs a Give a Ghaf campaign encouraging residents to plant it against desertification, and a conservation reserve protects it near the village of Nazwa.
Religion adds another layer. In the Mahabharata, the five Pandava brothers hung their celestial weapons in a shami tree before spending the last year of their exile in disguise, and found them untouched a year later, thanking the tree before taking them back. Hindus worship it on the tenth day of the Dussehra festival. Maratha warriors in the Deccan once shot arrows into its crown on that day and caught the falling leaves in their turbans, while Rajput rulers performed worship and released a jay, the bird sacred to Rama.
The tree feeds people too. In the Thar Desert its pods, called sangri or singhri, go into traditional vegetable dishes and curries. It is the state tree of both Rajasthan and Telangana. It can be confused with the Chinese lantern tree, but that species bears two-toned pink and yellow flowers, whereas this one's blooms are plain yellow.
Source: Prosopis cineraria
