Natural History: Stories of Peepal tree from three neighbourhoods in Chennai

Stories of peepal tree from Chennai -- one vies with a monument for attention, another latched on to a wall in Kilpauk and yet another

On Arcot Road in Kodambakkam, the compound wall of a facility under Greater Chennai Corporation’s Family Welfare Bureau has been replaced with CMRL’s metal boards.

Before the “change of guard”, a giant circular concrete container created for a peepal tree was pushing against the compound wall.

With Metro Rail work scudding through the road and changing some of its defining contours, the concrete container is all but gone. A rim with exposed steel bar is all that remains of it. However, just as a mould imparts a shape to anything placed within it, the bottom of the tree — roots interwoven with earth — wears a circular look.

However, having been circumscribed within a concrete container filled with earth, the coiled roots probably have not penetrated deep down into the earth.

One cannot help wondering what should be (as much as what could be) done with this peepal tree.

In Mandavelipakkam, at the Pillar junction — the nomenclature derived from a pillar installed by City Improvement Trust — a peepal tree vies with the civic monument for attention. It might not wrest first-time visitors’ attention from the pillar entirely, but does manage to divide it. That division of focus veers in the tree’s favour, thanks to its remarkable roots. Twisted and coiled and lying above the earth, the roots of the Peepal tree reach up to the height of the compound wall of the nearby GCC park. Given that GCC ran a campaign sometime ago against the practice of driving nails into trees, it is disappointing the civic body has driven one into this tree to display a board indicating a toilet is located close by on Lazarus Church Road.

Give it an inch and it would take over the wall. A customised version of an old thought that fits the peepal tree. A peepal tree growing on a wall is not uncommon. Only that this peepal tree has found a grandstand to flaunt that ability running in the family. It has latched on to a wall at Poonamallee High Road in Kilpauk. Everything that is known about the peepal tree — the tenacity particularly — is in splendid display as the peepal’s roots spread across the wall and claw into it for support. Having clamped itself into the wall, the tree is flattened against the wall, and still growing.