Plumeria flowers to add colour to Cubbon Park

Gift from Pondy

Cubbon Park, known for its tree cover will now also be more colourful in six months with flowering trees with horticulture department through its tree exchange programme is bringing in a huge collection of flowering trees collected from 45 different countries.

The Horticulture Department has initiated a programme to plant ‘Plumeria’ a flowering tree, which has been brought from Auroville Botanical Garden and Foundation (ABGF) from Puducherry through an exchange programme.

The Park will begin planting on January 1, 2012. Chief Justice Vikramajit Sen and Justice N K Patil will inaugurate the planting programme, which will make the Park the second largest collection of plumeria species in the country after Auroville Botanical Garden .

“Auroville Botanical Garden and Foundation has been collecting this flowering plant species from about 45 countries since past fifty years. They have now about 300 shades of flowering trees. We have got about 250 of them,” said Dr M Jagadish, deputy director of horticulture, Cubbon Park.

The exchange programme is the effort of well-known environmentalist A N Yellappa Reddy.

“Even  Lalbagh has just 85 varieties of this flowering trees, while the number of species are just three, now we have 7-8 species,” said Jagadish.  

The botanical garden at Auroville was established on a barren patch way back in late 19th century and is now a collection of rare plants from across the globe. Jagadish stating that Yellappa Reddy who had once gifted the garden with Suragi and Shorea talura saplings ensured that the garden would spare some of its rare varieties for Cubbon park.

The horticulture department will be planting it in cluster of six-eight colours along the ring wood circle (behind central library) and the patch adjoining UB City. “In these clusters there will be various patterns in the same colour. For instance if a plant with red flower is planted the cluster will include various red shades and pattern in it,” said Dr Jagadish.

Decidious plant

 ‘Plumeria’ a flowering tree is decidious plant and is origin of South and Central America, Brazil and Mexico and is now found in various attractive colours in about 52 countries. The Sun loving plant starts flowering within six months of its planting twice a year, while spring flowering makes it more attractive.

The tree grows up to 22 feet and spreads up to 15 feet radius. The interesting aspect about this plant is that it can be trimmed and shaped to make it more attractive.