Mahogany Magic

In the post-winter month of Feb - occasionally extending into early March - something astonishing comes alive in Bangalore, a process that, because it is commonplace, is taken for granted by all of us. 

Many years ago, as a part of the social forestry program, large-leaved mahogany (Swietenia macrophylla) was planted all over the city. This is not the expensive-wood mahogany that is considered better dead than alive. Rather, it is but a poor cousin, poor enough to be planted by the road and left to grow unhindered. And grow it does to a large size, flush with large green leaves and capsule-like fruits, covered with minute knobbly projections, containing many winged seeds that are, as I write this note, scattered on our pavements and roads. 

In early Feb, as if on cue, every tree of this species begins to shed its leaves. The beginnings are modest and I often stand for a few minutes under the benign shade, tracking the lazy swirl of a leaf as it breeze-dances its way to the ground. A couple of days later, the process acquires a momentum, a shot of inspiration, a fillip and the occasional leaf is now joined by many many more, turning shedding into a veritable shower. Park a car under the tree for a day and you could well miss the steel-and-rubber under the pile up. Imagine, for a moment, just what imperative the tree is responding to, to have to issue pink slips with such rapidity, to shake off its clothing, much as wet dog shakes off water with some annoyance. 

The imperative, of course, is the heat which results in transpiration loss. In the tropics, our deciduous trees shed their leaves in the summer, unlike the temperates where autumn is the season for the shed-fest, yet the magic of the mahogany is the sheer velocity of the process, measured in hours, not days, in the briefest moments of a mild breeze, not in gradual phase of weather change. 

And one day, the tree is bare, a shadow of its former self - indeed it is quite an appropriate turn of phrase, for a bare tree's shadow is but sparse, a gigantic fibrous root system it would seem, upside down. 

Miss this spectacle for a day or two though and you have missed it for a year. For very soon, the tree begins to grow its leaves again, bright dark-green leaflets, that soften the summer sunshine and fan the weary pedestrian. A week later, the tree is back to its former glory, bathed in a shiny green, a new look for the year ahead. For some years now, I have watched this with fascination. I have far more questions than answers each year; questions such as 'What determines the speed of renewal?' and 'Why does it not wait for some indicator of rain before sprouting its leaves back?' When a spectacle forces a question, we know that Nature is at work. Here, it's the magic of the Mahogany.