• Botanical Name: Sterculia villosa
• Common Name : Elephant Rope Tree
• Place : Naugriat, Meghalaya
• Date : 23.5.17Wiki says ..

I am not a botanist, I don’t go in search of plants. I love to know the plants and trees which I am surrounded by. Now when I pass by the trees and flowers with great pride I tell them ” I Know You”.

As we started out 4000 step descent towards a remote village called Naugriat from Cherrapunji by foot, our guide told us about this beautiful unique looking tree outside our Rest house in the village. I was very eager to get down to the village and get a glimpse of the tree which he described in vivid detail.

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There is was, a small tree about 12 ft height with these pods hanging in green and red colours. I did not know if it was a fruit or a flower. No leaves on the tree either. Maybe a flower I thought and slept that night not knowing anything about the tree other than its local name “Udal”. It was a night of heavy hail and rain. We woke up at 6:00 in the morning and I rushed to see the tree hoping atleast some flowers survived the hail. Just as I walked out something spectacular happened right in front of me.

One of the pods in bright red colour burst and out came the black seeds and the water on the pods dripped down the black seed. I could not believe my eyes. climbed up a few rocks next to me to get as close as possible to the fruit ( which I thought was a flower all along) and caught this moment before it could disappear. There was just this one tree in the whole village, but as we travelled towards shnongpdeng a few days later I saw many more such trees but really big full grown trees which were abou

t 25 ft and more. But this small tree will be very special to me.Local language – UdalLocation : Naugriat.

Udal or Elephant rope tree (sterculia villosa, family : sterculiaceae ) is a medium-sized deciduous tree with spreading hairy branches. Bark is white, smooth and thick. In Bangladesh it is mostly found in Chittagong, Chittagong Hill Tracts and Sylhet.

commonly known as: elephant-rope tree, hairy sterculia, woolly ordure tree 

* Assamese: ???? odala * Garo: ubak * Gujarati: ?????? sardol * Khasi: dieng star * Konkani: ????? sardol * Malayalam: ???? vakka * Manipuri: hei-rit * Marathi: ????? sardol * Mizo: khau-pui * Nepali: ???? khava, ???? odani * Oriya: ????? kodala * Punjabi: ???? massu * Tamil: ??????? anai-nar, ????????? vakku-nar * Telugu: ???????????? kummarapoliki