Bonsai & the Life in the Plants

Last month I visited a Bonsai exhibition at the Jaquard gardens of Schio. The sight of tiny plants looking like a miniature version of full-grown trees reminded me of a nature-visit in Bologna some years ago. This post is about two different ways of thinking about the life-forces in the plants. At the same time, it is also a reflection about the relationship between humans and nature.

Indian Ideas About Nature

Let me start briefly with some of my ideas about nature, which are influenced by my growing up in India. Hinduism is full of Gods and Goddesses, each of whom is linked with an animal and a plant species. There are many mythological stories that teach one to respect all the beings as a part of the respect for the sacred.

There are different stories linked with plants in the Hindu mythology. Like the story of the sacred Tulsi plant (Indian Basil), which represents a pious prostitute. Thus, people believe that this plant should not be kept inside the house, but must be planted in the courtyard where the families can pray to it at dawn and sunset by lighting a lamp near it. The 1960's Hindi film Parakh had one of my all time favourite songs, Mere Man ke diye (The lamp of my heart), in which Sadhana lights a lamp and prays to Tulsi plant. According to Ayurveda, Tulsi is an important medicinal plant. Such myths and sacred stories, are ways to remind the communities about the importance of different species of plants and animals, and to safeguard the biodiversity.

I remember my grand-mother once telling me to not to pluck the leaves of a plant at night because "the plant was sleeping". I think that such a way of thinking illustrates the popular understandings of life in the plants among Indians. While in the cities, people have a more transactional ideas about nature (for example, that it is good for breathing and well-being, it is relaxing and stress-busting), in the smaller towns and villages of India, I feel that there is still a lot of respect and traditional knowledge about these ancient understandings of nature.

Bonsai Plants

Literally the term Bonsai means "planted in a vase". The aim of growing a Bonsai is to create a realistic representation of nature through a miniature tree.

An exhibition of Bonsai plants was held at the beautiful 19th century Jaquard garden in the centre of Schio. It is a small garden but is very beautiful, with an old theatre and a green-house. The exhibition presented the plants grown by the Bonsai students of Schio under their teacher Dr. Ennio Santacatterina.

I spoke to Ennio to understand about Bonsai. He explained that he had discovered his passion for Bonsai after his retirement. His school is a part of the Bonsai Art School and its classes are held in a local plant shop called Garden Schio.

Ennio sees Bonsai as a part of the Zen traditions from Japan, in which it is fundamental to understand kamae, the basic and essential nature and characteristics of each plant. He cites the Bonsai guru Aba Kurakichi and says, "We must conserve all the specificities of the nature of each plant because Bonsai is a life-art." This means that each plant will develop according to its own characteristics and the Bonsai-maker must know how to enhance its individuality and highlight its beauty by selecting the appropriate style, branches and spaces.

I think that it means that a Bonsai is not created but rather it is nurtured, grown and gently guided. It is an exercise in mindfulness, in which the Bonsai-maker searches for a connection with the plant through silence and meditation, to understand its nature and develops a vision of how it should grow. Then, with patience and mindfulness, the maker helps the plant to achieve that vision.

Free-Growing Nature

While Bonsai speaks the language of Zen, meditation and mindfulness for creating a connection with plants, it seems as if the plant is moulded into an idealised vision of how it should look. It reminded me of another encounter about plants - in 2011, I had an opportunity to meet Mr. Marco Colombari, a gardener and plant-lover from Bologna, who had some very radical ideas about the plants.

Marco had guided us in the discovery of a forest, talking to us about how to observe and "see" the plants. A century ago, this forest was an "aviculture centre", an area for developing and growing different species of birds. Then it had become a hunting laboratory and a honeybee cultivation centre. In the 1980s, surrounded by multi-story apartment buildings, this area was supposed to be used for building more condominiums. However, the local residents had started a campaign to save it as a natural area. It is now managed by an association called Oasi dei Saperi (The Knowledge Oasis), which promotes it as a site for the conservation of biodiversity. It is known as the Forest of St. Anna and is located in the Corticella area of Bologna.

Marco's point was that every plant is a living being and has its own characteristics. He felt that people decide about planting trees and plants without really thinking about those natural characteristics. Thus, every time we cut the branches of a tree for making it fit into our urban landscaping, it is like closing an animal or a bird inside a cage. In the forest, he had shown us parts of the trees where the branches had been cut, making us look at the seeping liquids from the cut surfaces and drawing parallels with injured animals.

Besides the natural forest, St. Anna Forest also has some other areas including a botanical garden for growing medicinal herbs, a small pond which was used in the past for jute production and a group of ash trees with old artificial nests which were used for keeping birds when it was an aviculture centre.

Some Reflections

Listening to Marco had a very strong impact on me. Reflecting on his words and coupled with the philosophy in the Indian sacred books of Upanishads, I feel that it is the same life-force flowing inside the trees and plants which flows in every living being.

How do I reconcile this understanding with our daily business of living? There is a proverb in Hindi which says "If the horse becomes the friend of the grass, what would it eat?" I think that this proverb sums up the basic dilemma of our life - the impossibility of avoiding violence, if we wish to live.

Thus, I think that all life in the world is inter-connected and there is no way we can avoid eating other life forms, till the time comes for us to die when we return back to the earth, turn into our basic elements and become a part of the never-ending cycle of life, death and decay. To me it means respecting nature and all forms of life, which I translate as avoiding giving unnecessary suffering to my fellow creatures. Thus, I feel that individuals can decide if they wish to eat meat or they prefer to be vegetarian or vegan - it is a matter of choice linked with personal convictions.

However, I think that keeping animals to be used for their meat (chicken, ducks, sheep and cows) in narrow spaces, which do not allow them to move, and making them eat food laced with hormones and antibiotics so that they can fatten quickly, or hurting them unnecessarily, are wrong.

It means being kind to the animals and birds that we keep as pets. It means, taking care of the nature so that our biodiversity is maintained and strengthened. It means that if we have a zoo or a circus, we shall ensure dignified spaces for keeping the animals and treat them with care. I think that zoos and wild-life parks can play an important role in saving species close to extinction and in teaching young people about the importance of safeguarding nature and biodiversity.

Some people would completely separate humans from other animals because they see all human-animal interactions as basically evil and unwelcome for the animals. They are against keeping pet animals, they don't like zoos, they do not want any experiments involving animals - I feel that it is an extreme view and does not help the animals or the nature.

I hope that science and technology would soon progress so that one day we can have all kinds of food, including meat and fish, grown in cell-cultures. In the meantime, I would like more humane conditions for the animals we keep for meat.

Conclusions

Coming back to the plants, does making the plants grow as miniaturised Bonsai trees means that the plants are being forced into unnecessary suffering? Probably Marco Colombari would say yes. I don't think so. I feel that Bonsai practice, by helping us to seek a connection with the plants through mindfulness and meditation, is another path to recognising the importance of nature.

The evolution has made different life-forms co-dependent on each other. We have biomes inside each of us, made of billions of bacteria and viruses - every time we are ill and take medicines, we are killing millions of them. Life, death and decay are a part of a never-ending cycle going around us all the time and there is no way we can say that we don't want to be a part of this cycle.

This reflection about the life in the plants, makes me think of Shiva, the Hindu God who controls the never-ending cycles of creation and destruction in the universe. I think that Shiva is a metaphor of the life and death which connects together all the organic and inorganic matter of the universe. It is the life-force moving the particles composing the atoms, which combine to make the molecules of different elements, the building-bricks of everything in the universe. Life and death are illusions, because those atoms and the forces moving their particles, they do not die and will continue to combine and create new forms all the time.

***

Raiders of the lost Poppies - Notes from a nature walk

(A post from 2008, edited & corrected in 2013)

Mariangela lives in Rimini. A couple of weeks ago she was travelling to Asti and passed thorugh Bologna. "There are poppies in Bologna", she sent me an email. I was in a conference in Genova. Shit, this year I had forgotten all about poppies! There used to be this old field near our house that would get full of red poppy flowers in April-May. I had been there with Mariangela. They mowed that field down two years ago and since then I hadn't ever seen large expanses of poppy flowers.

Poppy or the Pappaverum Somniferum is supposed to be that plant that can be used to make opium. For getting opium you you need the milk of the ripe dry fruit. That is the reason, why you need a special permission to grow poppy plants in Italy. Some people say that to get opium you need another variety of poppy and perhaps you also need the hotter sun of equator. I am not sure about that but you can usually see the bright red poppy flowers along railway tracks and highways, where it grows as a weed.

The black poppy seeds are used commonly as decoration on bread and give off a lovely aroma. I am going to look for poppy flowers one of these days, I had told myself. Today was the the day of operation poppy.

I decided to go out towards the countryside for the morning walk of our dog, Brando. He is getting old, our Brando, and likes to go over his usual walking routes and usually if I try to pull him in some new directions, he usually does his Angad ji show, pointing his feet and refusing to move. However, today I was in no mood to give him and kept on pulling him till he gave in.

And no Ipod, no music to distract today, I decided. Nature demands proper attention or so, I thought. And so off we were.

The world of seeds

Just out of the house, and I got distracted by the maple seeds. There were so many of them hanging from the tree like plastic butterflies. So I started looking around clicked the pictures of different looking seeds. Here are some examples. The maple seeds had wings like butterflies flying with acute angles. Later I saw another variety of Maple, where the seed wings were in straight lines, at 180° angles.

In the next picture is what they call "albero falso di Giuda" or the false Jude's tree, with dried beans like seeds. In autumn, these trees without any green leaves and only these dark brown seeds look slightly sinister, and make me think of Dracula myths. I also don't know why they call them false Jude and if there is a real Jude's tree as well?

I like the seeds of Lime trees with the strange wing that is pierced by the flowers. I have read of the subtle perfume of Lime but to me the flowers seem scentless.

Then I saw the Elm tree with round penny like wings holding a small seed in the middle, in the next picture. Though on the tree the seeds are bunched together like piles of pennies and it is not easy to make out the form of individual seed.

And Finally these rounded beans like seeds that look like jhumkas, women's ear-rings. I don't know the name of this tree.

The world of roses

Then it was the turn of the roses. There were so many of them in the garden that we passed. Some of the housewives, going about their daily business of dusting and beating the carpets with sticks, looked at me with a suspicion as I tried to get a good angle to click their roses, but they were quickly mollified by the sight of Brando, who can look nice, cuddly and angelic when he is not busy barking at any rival dogs. So here are some of the roses I saw this morning.

Other flowers

However there were some other flowers as well that asked to be clicked, even if I didn't know their names, except for the tulips. Tulip flowers have such zig-zaggy edges? To me they had always seemed smooth so I am not sure if this tulip is some special variety or do all tulips have these kind of edges?

Finally the poppy flowers

I did find the poppy flowers finally just a little outside, on the road that goes along the wheat fields. There were not too many of them but enough for taking some pictures.

A disgusted dog

It was a lovely morning and our morning walk lasted almost one and half an hour. Unfortunately Brando didn't appreciate it and seemed a bit annoyed at loosing his rhythm as I forced him to hold still while I clicked pictures of plants and flowers from different angles.

The return back to home after the poppy flowers was quick as Brando almost ran, understanding that I had completed my mission, pulling me along! If you think that he is too sweet or cute or small to pull people, you don't know him yet!

***
Note: This post was originally written in 2008

Discovering our living planet

(A post from 2011, edited & corrected in 2013)

 

The email from our local library asked, "Are you interested in learning about plants and trees and how these are inter-connected with life on our planet? Join us for an exploration of green areas surrounding us in the city and yet hidden from us ...".

The city where we live, Bologna (pronounced Bolonia), offers a regular and frequent choice of talks, discussions, art visits and films. Normally I sign up for initiatives related to museums and arts and it had been some time since I had gone on a walking tour. Still my curiosity was stimulated by the email so I signed up for this city walk to discover the hidden green areas of our neighbourhood. It also helped that no fee was asked for the initiative!

The walk was going to take place on a sunday morning.

Our guide was quirky guy called Marco Colombari. Dressed simply, tall and bald with an open smiling face, he seemed obsessive about respecting nature and recognising the inter-connectedness of all forms of life. He himself respects these principles by living in the foothills of Appenine mountains not far from the city, where he has an organic farm. He likes to observe plants, trees, birds, animals, insects in all the different forms and teach people about setting up of organic gardens. His fundamental motto seemed to be that nature knows what is best, so do not interfere in nature's process unneccessarily.

The first stop of our walk was an ordinary tree on the footpath outside the library. "This is a lime tree", he explained, "it has lost it leaves due to the winter and yet it provides food to birds in this season when birds have difficulty in finding food to survive." It seems that underneath the bark of lime tree, runs a sweet lymph  that the birds can get by hitting on the stem by their beaks. Though I had passed that tree hundreds of times before, suddenly I saw it with new eyes.

He pointed to common hedges along the road and to small berries of different colours hidden under the leaves to indicate other sources of food for the non-migratory birds during winter.

"People like geometrical shapes and uniformity, so they make single plant hedges. Then they prune those hedges all the time and they spray insecticides on it. This means reducing the biodiversity of life, not allowing bees to take necter from the flowers and not allowing the birds to access the food in the plants. Best hedges are made by mixing of two or more different plants", he explained.

"Have you seen the scars of a tree when they cut its branches? Can you see how this tree suffered when it was cut and how it has tried to grow the scar around it to cover its surface. It is like amputating the arm or the leg of a person", he pointed out to the trees to make us look at the tree-scars. It was a little strange to hear him talking of trees as if they were persons.

Behind a group of houses he took us into a hidden garden that I had never seen before. It is called the St Anna grove. It is supposed to be quite ancient, going back to times before the city had come up. It was a kind of sacred grove where plants, insects and animals were allowed to develop according to the nature. This garden is managed by a group of young volunteers, mostly girls, who come here to study plant, insect and animal life.

Surrounded by the houses, St Anna garden seemed to be quite big. Inside, he showed us different kinds of plants and trees and told stories about them.

For example he told the story of common yew tree (Taxus Baccata). Apparently the yew tree wood is very good for making long bows, as it is very strong and yet flexible. Thus in fifteenth century, British started cutting all their yew trees for making long bows and many of the ancient yew trees that were even 2000 years old were cut. Finally there were no more yew trees left in Britain. Then the British started importing yew trees from countries of northern Europe. For this reason, most of the ancient yew trees of northern Europe have disappeared and can't be replaced easily as this tree is very slow growing and can live for even 5000 years.

Another story that I liked was about a plant called "Beggers' shrub". Apparently if you rub this plant on wounds, it makes the wound-scars grow big, red and scary, so that beggers used it to provoke pity among people.

"That is Taxsodium", he pointed to the huge trees with copper red colour leaves, "it comes from America and grows near water. Its roots come out of water and are breathing roots. Woodpeckers love it as it makes for nice hole where they can nest." I had seen Taxsodium trees before and admired their coppery colour, yet I had never noticed their breathing roots or the holes made by woodpeckers.

Behind the taxsodium trees was a small artificial pond that was made when Bologna was an important centre for growing cane. Cane had to be macerated in water and then used for making ropes and baskets. The pond was used for macerating the cane in 17th and 18th century.

As we came closer to the pond, a group of ducks came out eagerly, running around us. One of the volunteers went to a persimmon tree and gave some fruit to the ducks, that was devoured quickly. Apparently the ducks knew that the volunteers can feed them with persimmon so as soon as they see the volunteers they come out running.

It was a wonderful and very instructive visit. There are so many simple things around us that as urban persons we have ignored. This kind of knowledge is also getting lost as people living closer to nature and doing humble manual work are seen as ignorant and backward, and no body listens to them or tries to document their knowledge.

Here are a few pictures from this nature walk.

***

Spring came softly

(A post from 2012, edited & corrected in 2013)

 

During the night the temperatures still go down to 2-3 degrees centigrade but I can already hear the birds chirp outside my window. They are few and their chirping is blunted by the blinds drawn close and the windows shut tight to keep out the cold. But they are there in the morning, the male birds, testing their songs, doing riyaaz for the mating games that should start any day now. I can imagine their future mates listening to them, shaking their heads with the bemused smiles, waiting for the fun times to begin.

In another 2-3 weeks, their nests will be ready, filled with eggs. By end of March, the hard rock concerts will start, as the baby birds will wake up and start screaming for their breakfast. Just outside my window there are three plane trees. They are one of the favourite places for these birds, and at their peak, their noise matches the cacophony of Chandni Chowk any day.

I don't know why, but noisy birds make me somehow think about the Mangeshkar family. Lata, Asha, Usha and Hriday. I can imagine them as kids, all together at home, chatting, laughing and making noise, chirping and twirling.

Our house is at the corner of our apartment block, surrounded by trees on three sides, all of them taller than our second floor windows. On one side, the window looks out at a row of tall poplar trees, behind which you can see a few lime and pine trees. The living room window opens to a group of maple trees with a lone, tall silver lime in the middle. Yet the birds prefer only the plane trees close to my bedroom, there are no nests on poplars, lime and maple trees.

After the big snowfalls in Bologna in the beginning of February that lasted more than two weeks, over past few weeks, bright sun had come out. But it was still cold and the snow took almost three weeks to melt. Then finally last week, the temperatures improved to a balmy 13-14 degrees centigrades.

Suddenly you can feel that spring is coming. Like a shy bride, her head still covered with a veil, peeking out surreptitiously, touching the water in the puddle with her toe to see if it is too cold. Nude thin branches of dark trees, like fakirs doing penance, have tiny gems that can be easily missed if you don't look for them. In another week, they will open into tiny tender green leaves. Roses in the garden in front of our front door have a couple of newly born red coloured leaves at the tip.

The evergreens don't need to wait for the new leaves to come out, they are already getting ready with their flowers. Among the trees in our park that had lost all their leaves during winter, there is just one tree, that has no leaves but is already full of flowers. They are simple looking flowers, without any bright colour or perfume. I think that it is a beech tree but I am not sure.

Why did this tree not come out first with leaves, like the other trees, I wonder. May be it wants to take advantage of this time, when it does not have to compete with other more beautiful flowers, so that birds and insects can help in its pollination?

In the park, there not many children, perhaps because it is still cold. There are just a father and son duo, doing martial arts practice with a stick. The man moves the stick. It twirls in his hands in fluid dancing motions, as it cuts the wind above his head. The child looks at the father and tries to copy him. The man repeates the movements, doing it more slowly this time, showing the boy where to put the feet and how to turn at the waist. Watching them is so beautiful.

Brando, my dog keeps me company in the park. He is completely deaf and can hardly see because of cataract in both eyes. He waits for me patiently, while I click pictures. Till a couple of years ago, it was difficult to go out with him on photography trips because he was full of testosterone and fought with all the male dogs that we encountered. Now he is quiet as lamb, happy for any chance of sitting down and resting.

A man with his dog passes close but Brando does not look up at that dog. Earlier they used to get into barking matches, refusing to stop. "He has become deaf?" the man asks me, shaking his head.

"Also blind", I tell him.

"Oh, he won't last very long now. Remember my other dog, the white one? He became like that, couldn't hear or see and within one month he was gone. This one will also go quickly", he says mournfully, shaking his head.

"As long as he does not suffer", I murmur as we walk away, not telling him that Brando has already been deaf and blind for more than a year.

On the tree there is a robin, the bright red patch on its chest contrasting with its dull brown plumage. However, as I lift my camera to click its picture it flies away. A little while later, I see a jay bird, its bright blue back with black and white stripes at the edges, beautiful as it flies away. I don't even try to click its picture.

At the other end of the park, where sunlight falls for the whole afternoon, there are already some flowers. Tiny white margheritas with yellow circles in their centre. Tiny purple coloured flowers are also there that the Italians call "occhi della madonna" (Madona's eyes). I can also see a few small white flowers and a couple of shining yellow star like flowers.

By next week, there will be hundreds of these flowers. In 2-3 weeks, there will be hundreds of thousands of tiny flowers, covering every inch of the park, along with cherry, jasmine and horse chestnut flowers on the trees. And the spring would have forgotten its veil, admiring herself in the mirror, laughing with abandon. And early in the morning, I will wake up with the cacophony of the chirping birds.


***