Seemai Karuvelam And Other Similar Plants :- The Threat of dominant , invasive species.

1. Mr Vai .Gopalaswamy, an accomplished Tamil politician has not been encountering any success lately. However, he can take reasonable pride in the fact that  it is his litigation that spurned up the Madras High Court to issue orders to all District Collectors and Forest Departments that Seemai Karuvelam  plants must not only be cut and uprooted but also be prevented  from sprouting again by having  burning embers laid on  the root system. In many ways, this is a clear judicial environmental legislation. But citizen groups are not complaining against it. In fact in some cases, the courts has ordered removal of these trees by litigants to secure bail, parole or even in lieu of cost . Division Bench of Madras High court has frowned upon such practices. But that is a totally different matter altogether.

2. The Seemai Karuvelam ( Prosopis Juliflora)  is not by itself a bad species. It is native to Mexico and now spread to all major continents.Everywhere it has been recognised as an Invasive, and that too a dominant species. Hence it is feared that over a period of time these trees would wipe of other local species like Neem , Mango , Banyan , Peepal etc. When human beings migrate from one place to another , they  carry with them their food habits , religious beliefs , different ideas and occasionally seeds. Not  too many avid coffee drinkers know that when Baba Budan went to Hajj,  he carried from Arabia seven coffee beans which were originally  native to  Ethiopia. For more than a century, coffee was grown as a wild crop in the Western Ghats region of Arabian Coast. Subsequently British started coffee plantations in Chikmagalur and Coorg. I dwell on this in detail because to show that  not all introduced species are bad for humanity.

Seemai Karuvelam in news 

3.One may wonder  why the Seemai Karuvelam did not become another coffee plant. One will also  wonder who brought this to India. What use did the Seemai Karuvelam have in India?. These are questions also throws some light  of our changing life patterns. As a kid, I grew up in households that used charcoal as the most convenient fuel. My maternal grandmother always used the charcoal made from casuarina tree stems/roots . They packed a lot of energy burnt with less smoke and reduced into ashes which were recycled for cleaning the huge domestic vessels. In my paternal house instead of casuarina tree charcoal we had forest charcoal and thereafter Leco(tm)lignite.  In fact the Seemai Karuvelam was one of the essential ingredients for making this forest charcoal. India witnessed a huge demand of timber as firewood during 20th Century. To begin with, even the Indian railways contemplated using charcoal as a fuel and in fact did use it for some time before changing over to coal. But now a days, a reasonably literate lower class women knows and often enjoys the convenience of cooking gas. Definitely,  cooking gas has made the average Indian women’s life more tolerable and resulted in surplus of firewood that included Seemai Karuvelam.

Seemai Karuvelam Tree

4.As a young person I remember that even forest Departments resorted to planting these and other Acacia species because they were sturdy, provide a green cover, enable regular periodic harvesting of firewood, creates natural biomass attracting avian visitors. As a college student I have seen the Forest Department planting these trees aggressively near lakes and sometimes right in the late. True, the biomass generated by these plantations shrunk the depth of these lakes, reduced the water retention ability, facilitated runoff from the lake bed rather than impounding thus paving way for these lakes becoming forest officers and in fact High Courts (Madurai and Allahabad). That is another story.

Allahabad High Court

5. We must actually feel happy about the fact that 

Mongolian Champaka

the issue of the removal of these trees, in a way  highlighted the serious biological threat of introduced invasive dominant and alien species. Of late,  foresters are not averse to the introduction of species from Australian outback, because for a degraded land to have earliest green cover these are a sure bet. Similarly horticultural industry prefers Chinese champaks to the native one because they are more fragrant and sturdier. Hence we must be conscious of the fact that  more and more plant varieties are introduced in India. For e.g.. Apples in Himachal and Tea at Nilgiris are not native to India yet nobody is  grumbling about them.

6. At this point of time it would be worthwhile to examine  whether there are other plants like Seemai Karuvelam which cause dangers for no less than Seemai Karuvelam ,and yet society remains unaware of  its dangers . One such plant is water hyacinth. I remember, as a school child that this plant was rare in our ponds , streams , rivers and backwaters,. Everyone knows that this is not native to India. Nobody knows  who brought this plant to India. Unlike Seemai Karuvelam which had some use to the farmer , either as firewood or as occasional fodder, the water hyacinth has no uses for humanity . Nowadays it is very difficult to find water bodies in big and small towns. The available water bodies are choked with water hyacinth. If you enjoy a boat ride in the picturesque kayals of Kerala,  you are likely to see more of water hyacinth than coconuts.

Water hyacinth in  Backwaters of Kerala

7. While I am reasonably sure that Bangladesh is also facing this problem I am not too sure about Sri Lanka. But , I am afraid that this weed is likely to be there as well. I read in National Geography that enterprising Bangladeshi water dwellers have converted these water hyacinths  into floating vegetable fields where they grew okra, Brinjal  and other native vegetables. But I am afraid that we are heading towards the irony of Indian villagers depending on vegetables sold by retail chains.

8. One other invasive weed that requires the attention of the army against invasive species will be Parthenium. It is popularly known as Congress grass. This weed  is the mother of many allergies. It is also known as Congress grass because the flowers of this plant look like the Topi of a Congress man.

Nobody knows who got this plant to India. Unconfirmed rumours say that these seeds came along with the wonder seeds of Dr Norman Borlaug  that heralded the Green Revolution and hybrid technology. These drought resistant perennials spread easily to waste lands that become a herb jungle releasing into the atmosphere a lot of histamines and other allergy inducing substances . In other words, you start suffering an ailment
 which your doctor can not easily diagnose.I say all this because all of us must recognise and appreciate that the threat to Indian Bio diversity by the introduced species is imminent and real. This is not to say that all introduced species are bad. Can you imagine an India without potatoes, groundnut, chill, cashew coffee, tea ,rubber, nutmeg etc.  These crops though alien, today constitute the backbone of the Indian plantation industry. Just like people, some plants assimilate themselves well in the society and become part of endemic vegetation (vegetation peculiar to the local environment).According to Charles Darwin’s theory of Natural Selection, there is a struggle for existence among living beings. Those plant species which are necessary for human trade receive substantial support from farmers for purely economic reasons. This is indeed is the application of  theory of  the Natural Selection as envisaged in the magnum opus “the Origin of Species”.

9. To conclude I should state that it has become very fashionable among  younger generation to plant more trees.Naturally they take the help of forest Department around the country Most of the government  agencies, for raising unattended huge plantations and  for providing green cover continue to choose alien species for foresting Indian localities. This attitude is the biggest threat to Indian biodiversity.

   Hence whenever trees are         planted make sure that they are  local and blend with the  environment as natives. Have     useful alien species in such a way that it enriches your biodiversity rather than becoming a threat to it. 

Finally plant more trees, plant native trees, watch out against dominant invasive alien species. Long live Bharat varsha. Add the plants water hyacinth , Parthenium and others to the rank of Seemai karuvelam .