Some Khajuripadar life

I came across some interesting trees in Khajuripadar, most of which are not found in the UK.  One of our meetings was held in the shade of a tentuli (tamarind) tree which gave us some welcome respite from the heat of the Indian sun.

I've often used tamarind when preparing food but not seen the fruit growing on a tree which has very attractive foliage.  Here are a few tentuli fruits hiding in the leaves.

This is a very large and probably very old cashew tree with a few tentuli leaves in the foreground.  I have seen cashew trees many times here in Orissa but all the others I've seen have been in commercially managed plantations where the trees are kept small and easy to harvest.  This one looks much more majestic but is probably more of a challenge to pick the nuts.

These are baby jackfruits, a member of the mulberry family.  These fruits can grow up to 20-90 cm long and 15-50 cm wide with a  weight ranging from 4.5-20kg or even as much as 50kg.  How they stay on the tree and don't break the branches with their weight I have no idea, I hope to see these fruits when they are full grown.  To the best of my knowledge I've never eaten jackfruit, it's not something I have ever seen or even heard of in the UK.  I'm told it's added to curries or pickled and one of my colleagues has promised me that he will make me a curry with jackfruit.  I look forward to it.

This is a young wine tree.  I don't know the proper botanical name for them but there are a couple of species of palm tree here which are tapped for their sap which I'm told is sweet and tasty.  The liquor (not alcoholic) is sold and a strong, healthy wine tree can yield 70 lakh INR.  A valuable resource.

The harvesters work out which branches to tap by looking for where birds nests have been woven, high in the trees.  This, I was told, shows the branches which are full of the sap.  I've added a couple of photos here used in a previous post, now that I've found more about the process.

The tapping is done high up in the mature tree, lopping off the selected branch and hanging a bowl under the cut edge to collect the seepage.  The tapper climbs up a bamboo 'ladder' (more like a pole with a few notches on) to collect the sap.

I don't think that lizards are used as a source of food here but this one didn't hang around for long when it realised I'd spotted it.

No village is complete without it's canines.  These pups are from a family of 3 survivors of a litter that lost their mother when they were only around 1 month old.  They're lucky to have survived but looked healthy and full of energy, scampering around and digging holes in the ground for us to trip up in.