Sunday, April 25, 2010

The cannon ball tree

This sight that met me when I walked into my grandmother’s house in Kerala last week had me worried. I thought a hurricane had hit it selectively.
The 70 year old cannon ball tree or nagalinga pushpam tree (originally a native of South America) sheds its leaves three times annually. I am told the mighty tree sheds all its leaves over a period of one week. A part of all my memories of summer vacations while growing up, the tree was planted by my grandmother in her front yard around the time she had her first child. Grandma now in her nineties reminisced about her trip to Madurai all those years back where she saw the tree for the first time and decided that she wanted to have one at home.

A closer view


The view of the top of the tree.

2 comments:

Journomuse said...

interesting..i never knew about the canonball tree..:)

Anjana Viswanathan said...

Hi Journomuse, if you click on the third picture and get a closer view of the tree, you will see three large fruits (not edible) hanging from the tree, hence the name.