Botanic grows app-etite for more

Howrah: An age-old adversity has given birth to a new-age solution at the country’s oldest botanic garden.
Faced with a severe staff crunch that has left the tourist zone without adequate guides, the Shibpur Botanic Garden authorities have come up with a new app that will help you navigate the garden.
The app will be launched in July during the Forest Week.By then, the entire garden will be turned into a free WiFi zone to let you download the app for free at the time of entry.
Building the app required months of painstaking collation by two scientists of the Botanical Survey of India posted at the 270-acre garden.
“We have over 15,000 trees of more than 1,377 species. It was an elaborate and strenuous work because not a single important tree could be left out. This apart, there were reams of old documents from which nuggets of interesting facts had to be collected and digitised,” said B K Singh, one of the scientists behind the app.
The app has been designed to open up a map of the garden indicating the visitor’s location. It will then guide the tourist along the myriad walkways to reach the rarest-of-rare trees that have been nurtured for centuries. On the way, the app will point out the ancient trees, explain their history, give botanic details and even elaborate on their medicinal properties.
A drop-down menu in the app will let you ‘plan your trail’ or choose to visit the sections with iconic plants or tell you ‘what’s in bloom’. Each click will open up relevant options and explanatory material.
Naturally, the authorities expect the Great Banyan Tree to attract maximum footfall. The 400-year-old tree with the largest canopy in the world has always been the garden’s chief attraction. Once the app leads you to the tree, it will give out nuggets of information like how Robert Kyd was impressed by the presence of the grand tree to start a garden around it, and how a fungal infection led to the loss of its main trunk.
“You can depend on the app to direct you to other famous trees like the Mangrove Gymnosperm or the Kumbhakarna tree. It is native to South America and is the only one of its kind in India. For six months it ‘sleeps’ and there is not a single leaf on its giant frame. The next six months it turn greens magically,” said joint director of the garden, Arabinda Pramanik.
Garden scientists expect the other big hits on the app to be the double coconut tree (Ludicia Maldivica) from Seychelles, again the only one in India, that the botanists of the garden have managed to fertilise after 119 years through artificial pollination; the 200-year-old baobab tree or kalpataru/wish tree so called because of the column of water in its trunk and the fact that it is rich in vitamins and eight varieties of amino acids; and the ‘mad tree, so called because all of its leaves are different from one another.