Expeditions Kerala

02/11/2013

Happy Diwali

15/09/2013

16/07/2013

04/12/2012

without any agenda, take a early morning service boat in Alleppey for a ride.

01/12/2012

Neelakurinji (Strobilanthes kunthiana) is a shrub that used to grow abundantly in the shola grasslands of the Western Ghats in South India, blossoms gregariously only once in 12 years. The Paliyan tribal people apparently used it to calculate their age.

Plants that bloom at long intervals are known as plietesials, the term plietesial has been used in reference to perennial monocarpic plants that usually grow gregariously, flower simultaneously following a long interval, set seed, and die.

In 2006, Neelakurunji flowered in Kerala (Munnar) and Tamil Nadu after a gap of 12 years. In 2018 it will flower again.
The shrub has an interesting life cycle, it comes alive green every year with the coming of Monsoon, but once the rainy season is over, all that is left is dry and dead-looking stems. This pattern repeats itself for eleven years, but in the twelfth year the plant bursts into mass flowering.Few of its family will be flowering in 8 years interval. Immediately after its mass flowering the honey collected by wild bee honey hunters is a popular local delicacy, it is much thicker and darker than other varieties.