Exotic trees bore brunt of cyclone showers

When the city was battered by a bout of unseasonal showers prompted by cyclone Phyan, the main casualties were the city's trees. Nearly 150 trees fell in the city, and ironically 90 per cent of them were of exotic origin.

The Pune city fire control room had a tough time last week as they were busy answering numerous calls of tree felling. The rains kept nearly 80 firemen on their toes, while 13 fire tenders were on the vigil round-the-clock through the period.

Chief Fireman Prashant Ranpise said, "Fire Control room received 166 calls, barring two calls of water logging and a single call of felling of cables, all calls made to fire control room were of tree felling cases."

Ranpise said, "We started receiving calls through the night. 13 fire tenders and 80 firemen were continuously busy clearing the broken trees."

City-based tree activist Vinod Jain said most of the trees that crashed were the exotic variety that had failed to acclimatise to Indian conditions. He said, "Ninety per cent of trees that fell in the city were of foreign origin including the Rain tree, Delonix Regia, Subhbhul, Gliricidia and Eucalyptus."

"Few trees of Indian origin like Pipal, Ficus religiosa, Neem, Mango also fell due to lack of spacing around the roots because of the under ground cabling going through out the city, which had hampering the root growth," he added.

Renowned botanist and tree expert Shridhar Mahajan, who has written a separate chapter on plantation of foreign trees in his book Aaple Vriksha, maintained that a classification of trees that fell last week needs to be done. He said, "In the colonial period, to compensate for the loss of forests in entire India, Silver Oak, Eucalyptus and many other trees were planted in India."