The language of light- part 1

There’s no way you can walk past the Red Vein Mallow, Abutilon pictum, without stopping to admire it. Those red veins are rich in anthocyanin pigments — not just pretty decoration, but visual cues for pollinators. Red flowers attract nectar-feeding birds like our sunbirds, and butterflies too, who see red vividly and glide in for their feast.

You’ve probably noticed hibiscus flowers also have a bright red centre with radiating stripes.

And you must have noticed the Gulmohar, Delonix regia, with its single petal that is speckled red — this is called the banner petal, a speckled landing pad to guide sunbirds and bees alike.

Another flower is the golden Canna lily, which also lays down its speckled dots like a trail of breadcrumbs, leading butterflies, bees, and birds deep into its throat.

But here’s the twist. Honey bees are blind to red. They see ultraviolet, blue, and green. Red appears to them as a dull, dark grey. How do they navigate?

Curious, I shone a UV torch on the flower and the hidden map revealed itself. Of course the bees have compound eyes and they still see a polished version, But this gives us an idea of how different the world looks for them.

The red veins turned into dark landing strips, and the muted yellow petals brightened just enough. This is what guides the bee straight to the nectar.

That yellow comes from carotenoid pigments, which not only attract pollinators but also reflect ultraviolet light, lighting up the petals like beacons in the bee’s world. Bees also follow scent trails and textures, reading the flower like a multi-sensory map.

It’s the same with the radiating stripes of hibiscus flowers — what’s invisible in red to us becomes a vivid path under UV for the bee.

So why be red, when it could be any other colour? Because the flower speaks many languages and caters to everyone’s needs.

It calls to us humans, who find red powerful and attractive — and so, we care for the plant.

It lures birds and butterflies for nectar and pollen. And for the bees, it lays down a secret trail of light and shadow — a map written in ultraviolet ink.

The Earth Remembers

Basale Soppu- Malabar spinach

There was a Malabar spinach and a guava growing next to the coconut tree. When we brought down the coconut tree in November, these two seemed to disappear too. Or so we thought. The roots of the guava were still intact; they sprang up again about a month ago. If that was a surprise, the spinach followed soon after, pushing through the soil. The seeds had lain safely buried in the earth, and the soil had remembered to send them back into the light, to see the sky once more.

An Unusual Leaf

A Conjoined Magnolia Leaf

During my usual stroll in the garden in the evening I found this unusual Magnolia leaf on the ground. I picked it up and found it was joined in the middle, probably two developing Magnolia champaca leaves had fused at the base or midrib, creating a twin-leaf structure. Had I not noticed, it would have got lost in the night. I remembered that the last time I saw a a conjoined leaf was from a guava tree.

Botanically, such a formation is known as synphyllous or a Conjoined Leaf Anomaly, likely the result of a developmental glitch during bud formation. It may have been triggered by environmental stress, insect damage at the bud stage, or simply a random genetic misstep.

Nature often surprises us with these brief deviations from the norm—like a poetic pause in an otherwise rhythmic sentence. I’ve pressed it between sheets of paper to remember this quiet oddity.