The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : Heritage grove in museum likely

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Aug 06, 2006

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

Heritage grove in museum likely

J. Malarvizhi

The CP Ramaswami Foundation will also be collaborating on the project The museum has also received some saplings.

CHENNAI : `Kadhambam' flowers on the walls of Buddhist temples and in medieval depictions of Krishna stealing clothes of the bathing `Gopis'. The `Calotropis Gigantica' shades Parvati in Tiruvaiyyaru and adorns pillars of Jain temples...

Now these, and several other species found in ancient and medieval Indian sculpture and painting, are flourishing in museums across the country.

Thanks to an untiring efforts of S. K. Sharma, founder-president of Environmental Society of India, the Government Museum in Egmore has also received some saplings of such plants.

The ESI, a regional resource agency to the Ministry of Environment and Forests, first received the request for saplings for the Chandigarh museum in 1989. After Mr. Sharma insisted on providing saplings that only belonged to India's `green heritage', he received requests from various institutions across the country.

Correspondence with the previous director of the Chennai Museum helped him list the plants the museum did not have. He could not bring all of them while travelling to the city to attend a training programme for young people on sustainable development.

"Airport authorities did not allow me to carry the tall plants," he said despondently.

However, he hopes that they will be used to establish a heritage grove.

Ponds with lotuses and lilies could also be created, he suggested.

No final plans for planting have been made yet, museum officials said.

The CP Ramaswami Foundation would also be collaborating on the project.

Mr. Sharma hopes that the Museum's original plan to raise awareness among school children, and bring out a pamphlet on the flora in Indian heritage would be implemented.

Truly national heritage

The list of species represents a truly national heritage, he points out, with the Artocarpus Heterophyllus flourishing on the walls of the Meenakshi Sundareshwar Temple in Madurai, and other temples in Madhya Pradesh and Orissa.

There are plants to suit all climate conditions too. Ferns are among the flora to adorn the heritage structures in Sanchi.

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