S hama, member, Madras Naturalists’ Society, flagged it in the Google group.
“Here is the blooming tree of November — Mara Malli ,” she wrote. “Enjoy, it’s everywhere.”
Shama was using November here as synecdoche for the monsoon season, which is the time the Mara Malli — tree jasmine in English — hogs the attention with its fragrant blooms. The good news is the tree continues to be in bloom, across Chennai.
Mahadeswara Swamy provided the botanical name. “Millingtonia hortensis. Flowers twice a year.”
It takes its name after an English botanist, Thomas Millington.
Wrote Devika: “Also called Akasa Malligai. Lovely aroma.”
By this time everyone was googling furiously to look at the pictures.
A passerby picking tree jasmine flowers, at Bollineni Hillside in Perumbakkam.
Millingtonia hortensis is named after Thomas Millington, an English botanist. “Hortensis” means “grown in gardens”.
A garden-favourite, it is also called the Cork Tree, referring to the fact that its corky bark is used in the making of bottle stoppers.
Tree jasmine introduces itself by filling the air with strong fragrance. As you near, you see a straight tall tree (can grow up to 24 metres, and very fast too) with thick bunches of leaves and clusters of flowers on elongated stalks. Every branchlet ends in drooping blossoms.
During the two monsoons, profusions of silvery-white flowers explode with fragrance. As the flowers are short-lived, the long whitish buds fall to form a starry carpet on the ground. The tree sheds its leaves between January and March and springs back with green shoots from April to May.
The transformation of the “old order giving way to new” is so smooth that the tree never looks naked. The tree flowers at night and generously drops them early in the morning. The tree doesn’t seed easily in India, and chooses to propagate itself through root nodes. A tree jasmine can live upto 40 years.
It grows in most parts of India, both in gardens and avenues. Its popularity lies in its ornamental value. Since the roots go far, “this tree is best suited for open spaces like large gardens and not roadsides,” says T.D. Babu of Nizhal.
I spotted three trees in the Besant Nagar Post office, several in Rajaji Bhavan and in AG’s office. One stands majestically on Third Avenue, Besant Nagar. The Kalakshetra campus has quite a number of these trees. One tree in the Pamban Swamigal temple campus in Thiruvanmiyur is fruiting now — there will be smooth capsule-like pods and winged seeds.
