Plant 021109GS1 for ID from Mandi in HP

[Gurcharan Singh]

Sending 021109GS1 for ID from Mandi in HP

 

Incidently the first plant I encountered on trip to Kullu-Manali was a small shrub, I could not place. It was apparantly cultivated outside a hotel.

 

Dr. Gurcharan Singh
Associate Professor
SGTB Khalsa College
University of Delhi, Delhi
India
http://people.du.ac.in/~singhg45

[Dinesh Valke]

Gurcharan ji, please check Cuphea micropetala.

Regards.

[Gurcharan Singh]

Dinesh Valke

Thanks a lot. That is the beauty of this group. With so many diverse experts, it so much lessens your work of sitting with books, hand lens and dissecting microscopes.

 

Thanks once again

 

Dr. Gurcharan Singh
Associate Professor
SGTB Khalsa College
University of Delhi, Delhi
India
http://people.du.ac.in/~singhg45

[Dinesh Valke]

Dear friends (and Gurcharan ji), the reason with which I arrived to the ID is not botanical, it is rather based on learning by mistakes !! For want of time, I put only the botanical name in my message earlier.

 

Let me append to it ... I had seen this plant in Mahabaleshwar ... http://www.flickr.com/photos/dinesh_valke/2195761806/ ... and had mistaken it for Woodfordia fruticosa !!!! ... ... one of my flickr contact (Tony Rodd) as well as Tabish corrected the ID.

[Gurcharan Singh]

Dinesh ji

And now the interesting coincidence. A few feet away from this plant was growing Cuphea hyssopifolia, which I could identify easily. Not in my wildest dreams could I thinkt that it could belong to the same genus.

[J.M. Garg]

I agree with Dinesh ji.

For a lot us like me, it's learning by mistakes or photography.
Photography has proved to be a great learning experience.

One photographs a plant, tries to identify it with the help of books etc., processes photos of different aspects of it, posts it, gets its confirmation/ correction on the group along with lots of discussion.

One sees it again in the field & may be repeats the process.

It involves so much of energy & time along with passionate involvement.

It's difficult for one to forget it easily.

 

2009/11/2 Gurcharan Singh <sin...@sify.com>

J.M.Garg (jmg...@gmail.com)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Jmgarg1
'Creating awareness of Indian Flora & Fauna'
Image Resource of thousands of my images of Birds, Butterflies, Flora etc. (arranged alphabetically & place-wise): http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:J.M.Garg
For learning about Indian Flora, visit/ join Google e-group- Indiantreepix:http://groups.google.co.in/group/indiantreepix?hl=en

[Gurcharan Singh]

Garg ji

This has been true for me also, although in a different way. During last 30 years or so I must have visited so many hill stations in connection with botanical trips. It was sufficient for me to identify for students the commonly growing plants. The madness started only after my son presented me a digital SLR camera last year (Earlier I had SLR film camera, with which you can't be that liberal). Last year I took more than 5000 photographs in California (they went into my International edition book), more than 2000 this year, and more than 1000 in Manali trip. Now I want to identify, every plant I click. We are all similar in that sense.

     And the way I identified Cuphea hyssopifolia and had no clue about another species of same genus, puts us all in the same bracket.

    Identification is a learning process for all of us, especially when we may be confronted with any of more than quarter million species of flowering plants.

       You can imagine my madness when I could find only a single small plant, which looked very interesting to me. I managed to take different photographs of this plant and finally managed to identify it as Viola betonicifolia.

2009/11/2 Gurcharan Singh <sin...@sify.com>

clear=all>
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With regards,

[J.M. Garg]

That's great!!!

With digital photography & internet, there is a similar madness everywhere in the world to photograph & document every aspect of our life including wildlife.
Indiantreepix is no more the same since you joined us.

I was worried when you were about to go to California. But see, you helped us with more zeal.

Can anybody say that it's only three months since you joined Indiantreepix & changed its face?

It is as if you were & have been always there.

Your great footsteps have lead so many of other experts joining & helping us in this quest.

 

2009/11/2 Gurcharan Singh <sin...@sify.com>

2009/11/2 Gurcharan Singh <sin...@sify.com>

J.M.Garg (jmg...@gmail.com)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Jmgarg1
'Creating awareness of Indian Flora & Fauna'
Image Resource of thousands of my images of Birds, Butterflies, Flora etc. (arranged alphabetically & place-wise): http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:J.M.Garg
For learning about Indian Flora, visit/ join Google e-group- Indiantreepix:http://groups.google.co.in/group/indiantreepix?hl=en