Nature Quest: Rare 'Parul' spotted
After years of continuous search, I came to the conclusion that Parul no longer exists in our midst. "Will it remain untraced?" I wondered. The only possibility is it may exist in the areas we have not explored yet. But spotting Parul in those nearly inaccessible areas would not be easy.
Renowned environmentalist Dwijen Sharma long ago predicted that the Sal forest and the hill tracts can be possible home of Parul. Parul is locally known as Kaamsonalu and the Mandi tribal people call it Baatcheel. We kept our search in the Sal forests and the hill tracts by these two names. One fine morning, I received an email from Jayed Amin with an attachment containing pictures of flowers lying on the ground. A banker by profession, Jayed is an ardent nature lover. He often communicates unknown or lesser-known flowers for identification.
From this picture, I wanted to know the location and I was delighted to know that it was in the Sal forest. We went to see the tree for ourselves on April 22 and found five trees in flowers by the wall of the Security Printing Press of Gazipur.
The trees are alive just because the area is restricted. I picked a flower to smell and found it quite fragrant. The shape, colour and scent of the flower matched Parul. I took a lot of pictures and told Jayed that we were at the last stage of a remarkable discovery -- the flowers are most probably our long-awaited Parul.
Getting back to Dhaka, I showed the photos to Dwijen Sharma. The next week, we showed him a sample collected from Gazipur. Another sample was sent to Sarder Nasir Uddin, senior scientific officer of Bangladesh National Herbarium. Analysing everything, they were 90 percent sure that it was Parul and said the rest 10 percent would be decided on seeing the fruits.
Parul (Steriospermum chelonoides) is a deciduous tree of medium height. Its leaves are compound, about 60cm tall. The flowers bloom at the end of the branches. The petals range from deep violet to rosy and are fragrant. Flower bud is long and hairy. The flower is half inches long and the petal lips are not hairy. Flowers start blooming at the beginning of April and they are aplenty throughout the month. At the same time, a lot of flowers fall on the ground.
Fruits appear towards the end of flowering. They are capsule, about 60cm long, and of oblong size, deep grey or purple in colour. The tree procreates through seeds.