It has often been referred to as the upside-down tree due to its massive, squat cylindrical trunk that gives rise to thick tapering branches that resemble a root system. “It's a funny tree,” said D.Narasimhan, Associate Professor, Centre for Floristic Research, Department of Botany, Madras Christian College, pointing to the tree's canopy at the Government Museum, Egmore.
“It is believed that it was thrown from heaven making it land upside down,” he remarked.
The upside-down tree is just one name of the rare species called ‘Adansonia digitata', which is also known as Baobab, Monkey-bread tree, Elephant foot tree or Devil's tree. “Since it is deciduous in nature, when the leaves shed, the tree looks eerie and haunted,” said Pauline Deborah, Assistant Professor, Department of Plant Biology, Women's Christian College, who for a while now has been documenting rare tree species in the city as part of her PhD thesis.
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On Thursday, Ms.Deborah was monitoring six of her students who were involved in measuring the girth of this tree, which is a native of Africa, as part of a tree census that was conducted on the Government Museum campus. For several minutes, the six held a measuring tape each in their hands and appeared to give the tree a bear hug while trying to get a sense of its thickness.
As S.Mohanapriya, a second-year plant biology student, was drawing out a huge ‘#' on the tree's trunk to indicate that it has been recorded in the list being prepared, some of her classmates were writing down the tree's dimensions — 7.5 metres in girth and more than 12 metres tall.
The Baobab and the ‘Swietenia Mahogani' are some of the rare species of flora that can be seen on the museum's campus, said M.N.Pushpa, curator, Botany section of the museum. “When a floral study was conducted here, over 100 trees and 30 herbs and shrubs were identified,” she said, adding that systematic classification of plants was useful for taxonomy purposes.
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Within the short walk from the front of the Museum premises to the back, Ms.Pushpa had pointed out several distinct species, some like the ‘Polyalthia longifolia' which is often mistaken for the Ashoka Tree and ‘Wrightia tinctoria', which is used to make the famous Chennapatna toys.
With the constant screeching of fruit bats in the background, Ms.Deborah explained how the museum became a storehouse of exotic species. “The campus is one of the oldest spaces for tree conservation. Since both the Conservator of Forests and the founder of the Agricultural and Horticultural Society worked here as curators, special interest was taken to import seeds from other countries.” Tree conservators believe that creating such a baseline data will generate interest around conserving heritage trees.
“The tree census will provide results for various aspects such as how many heritage trees are there, the diversity and the common trees in Chennai,” said Mr.Narasimhan. “These trees are an indication of the collective biomass available in the city and will indicate how much carbon a tree will absorb.”