There are few consolations. We get mangoes, of course, but we get them with the price of the gold colour of their flesh.

Last week, as I returned from the Welfare of Stray Dogs sale – which you should have missed only if you are illiterate – I was stopped in my tracks by the sight of a purple jacaranda in bloom, just outside the Oxford Book Store.

Sweet surprise

Actually, it might have well been a purple Poopdermalian Tiggerstonia for all I know. But it was a beautiful sight, the kind that makes city-dwellers walk past, thinking about other things and mopping their sweating faces.

This is a pity because you get to look at flowering trees for free. And this is the best time to do some flower spotting. In summer, the city bursts into bloom.

Flower-spotting

Stop for a moment on the sweep of Marine Drive and look up at Malabar Hill. Precious little greenery remains, it is true, but right now the green will be dappled with red and by the time May, like a rough beast whose hour has come at last, slouches towards Bhuleshwar to be born, the hill will blaze with red.

This red is a highly disputed red. There are those who say it is the Indian coral and those who claim it is the gulmohur.

There are those who say it is the Flame of the Forest. There are those who say it is the pala, and then they look at you snootily.

The problem arises because we have descriptions like these to help us. I have taken this from Some Beautiful Indian Trees by Ethelbert Blatter and Walter Milland (Bombay Natural History Society, 1937): "The terminal leaflet is a blunt oval in shape. It is described as obovate…"

Sure is. All the time. At parties in Cuffe Parade, you hear people saying, "Butea Monosperma's back in circulation, don't you know, the one with the obovate terminal leaflets?"

This is also the book that shows the Ashoka tree to have red flowers. We all know this must not be true.

What's in a name?

The Ashoka tree is that bendy one with the long leaves that people put up so that you can't peek into their verandahs, no? It grows quickly and it has long droopy leaves, no?

See, that's the problem with this fruits and flow ers wheeze. Nothing you know is right. But go look at Malabar Hill and enjoy the red flowers on the hill. You can call them what you want but only in your head. Say the name out loud and a discussion will erupt.

Bright as yellow

On many streets, the Caesalpinia will flower. That's the one flower whose name I know because we studied it in botany when I was in college at Elphinstone.

This is that yellow flower which occurs in racemose inflorescences, okay, okay, it's the one that occurs in small yellow bursts. Each individual flower looks like a child has taken a bunch of bright yellow petals and tied them up at the base.

The other common flower is the subabul, which is again yel low, with a deep red heart that shades into black.

In good books

When I walk around Shivaji Park, what's left of the hedges will be spotted with tiny black berries, so tiny that even the birds ignore them. They're what the hedge flowers have left behind.

If you want to know exact details, if you wish to squish the opposition with your knowledge of trees and flower names, go look for a copy of Green Solace by Dr Sharadini Dahanukar. (There's also a Marathi version called Heervaai, same lady.) The book tells you where the trees are, how to recognise them and which one, in a potation, will bring down fever. Me, I trust paracetamol.