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Abusing Trees
The other day I went for my evening jog in the nearby park. The sun was setting and the mellow light of the early winter evening enveloped the world. Like me, many other visitors were also enjoying the tree-lined park as birds sang in the cool evening.
I ran along a long walkway. Last monsoon many seedlings had been planted on both sides of this path, including krishnachura, mahogany, neem and acacia. Due to the unusually long rainy season, these had grown fast, reaching skyward towards their older, bigger brethren.
From a distance I saw a woman stoop in front of a neem sapling which was about four feet tall. As 1 passed her I noticed she was stripping leaves off the plant. I was annoyed but refrained from saying anything, thinking she was collecting a few leaves for medicinal use.
But on my way back I noticed that the neem sapling had been completely cleaned out. The woman was busily stripping leaves and small branches from another neem sapling. 1 could hold back no longer.
"How will that plant grow if you strip the leaves and branches like that?" I asked her.
She looked at me, startled. "You must know that trees need leaves to make their food. How will this baby tree get its food if you take away all the leaves?" I asked.
Now she found her tongue. "But I left half the leaves," she protested, turning red with embarrassment.
I did not want to make her miserable or engage her in a prolonged argu-
ment, so I resumed running after asking her to be considerate. Would she please let it grow?
This was not the first time I was aggrieved by tree abuse. Some years ago, soon after my father passed away, 1 found a mandaar (erythrina indica) tree he had planted. It was only six feet tall, but that summer it bloomed with the reddest mandaar flowers anywhere.
Then, sometime during the rainy season, a youngster from a neighbouring village chopped off the tree leaving a stump where its trunk was.
I was shocked. What was the purpose of this destruction? Villagers will often cut branches of bigger trees for fuel but know better than to destroy whole trees. In any case, this tree was too skinny for burning.
Fortunately the mandaar tree proved hardy and grew from the stump in a couple of years. Then one summer its flowers returned.
In villages, it seems that the most danger to trees is from thieves who steal branches for firewood or from cows which attack seedlings. Most villagers - except for the occasional brat - are keenly aware of the value of trees and nurture them with diligence.
But in cities, many people seem ignorant of, or indifferent to, the harm they might be causing a tree - by plucking all the leaves from a baby tree, for example.
Fortunately, the vast majority seem happy to leave trees alone. But it takes only a few to do irreversible damage. It is urgent that we stop them.
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