I saw a tree known as Parkia biglandulosa (common name: Badminton Ball Tree), native to West Africa, with strange flowers and fruit. Parts of the flowers are unusually asymmetrical, meaning they don't look the same on all sides, and the cococunt-sized fruits are encased in hard brown shells that split open to reveal their foul-smelling interior.
We are in the middle of cobra mating season (more on that in a future journal), so these snakes should be out and about. Although there have been a couple of cobra sightings on the National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS) campus, I have yet to spot one myself. The most common cobra species in India is the spectacled cobra. The famous king cobra also sometimes lurks about, but its numbers are declining due to habitat loss, collection by humans and other threats.
