Kurinji Flower - Nature's Gift to Mankind

Beautiful sights are a rarity, which we cherish lifelong. The longing for the beautiful sights become more attractive in cases where the sighting is periodical and more so if the sighting takes places after a considerable period of time. Flowers and plants have always attracted mankind time immemorial , and the late bloomers have a special place in the hearts of one and all.  

One of the many late bloomers and cherished sight is The Neelakurinji (Strobilanthes kunthiana), that blossoms only once in 12 years, carpeting the hill slopes during the flowering season. It is believed that the Paliyan tribal people apparently used it to calculate their age, basis the blooming of the flower. The wild flower  grows at a height  of 30 to 60 cm on hills slopes  at an altitude of 1300 to 2400 meters where there is little or no tree forest. The flower has no smell or any medicinal value. The famed Niligiri Hills , which literally means the Blue Mountains, got their name from the purplish blue flowers of Neelakurinji.

Neelakuringi represents the self awakening of a woman, as in the Tamil traditions a girl is considered to attain sexual maturity at the age of 12, for the Todas blossoming into womanhood had a poetic identification with the flower, for the Badagas at their funeral litany asked for forgiveness for the sin botching the plant, for the poets it is a symbol of longing for love and happiness, for the tribal  Kurinji is the symbol of love and romance

During the bloom there is a manifold increase of bees in the vicinity. Immense amount of honey become available and the rock bees and common hill bees visit the plant. It is also believed that the honey near the blossoms is the sweetest.

A lot of mythological significance is attributed to the flower. Both the Muthuvas of Munnar and the Todas of the Nilgiris consider the flowering of Kurinji as auspicious.   However there are taboos that prevent them from destroying the plant or its withered twigs until the seeds mature ten months after the flowering.

As the saying goes, it is an auspicious time to be  when the Neelakurinji flowers and it is believed to bring prosperity in the wake. A Club Mahindra Holiday advertisement said it well ” A beauty of nature, rare, elusive, stunning. She teases, she tempts, and she only reveals what she wants you to see. She is Neelakurinji – a flower which blooms once in twelve years”.

When the kurinji bush blooms, it has a profuse display of violet blue flowers that cover the entire plant. The blossoms spread out as a blanket on the hill sides of the Annmalai, Nilgiris and Palani ( Kodaikanal) hills. It beautifully decorates mountain sides in the Western Ghats of South India, and the spectacular and picturesquely sight is to behold for rest of our lives. It does not grow in any part of the world making itself a rarest of the rare. The last bloom of Neelakurinji was in the year 2006 and we were fortunate enough to  view the phenomenon of nature in Ootacamumd and Munnar.

In Ootacamund, we sighted the Kurinji flower blooming between the tenth and eleventh hair pin bend in the Singur Ghat road on the SH 67 road from Masinasudi to Ottacamumd. It did not cover miles and miles of mountain tops, as the name Niligris Hills signified but  the phenomenon was observed in more of a patch on the slope of a hill. It was sad to note that plantations and dwellings occupy much of the habitat and has endangered the Kurinji and its time the conservation group work to protect this nature’s awesome occurrence.

While on a trip to Munnar , Kerala,  India’s Little London in 2006, we came across the Kurinji flower. We were not all impressed with the patches of Kurinji blooms, we could sight in the environs of Munnar. There was a discontentment amongst us as the desired sighting of Kurinji Flower was not up to our expectations. Was the trip to Munnar made in vain. It was on our way back to Coimbatore, as we were crossing the Eravikulam National Park, Munnar - Udumalpet Road a long queue of people attracted our attention. We watched the people eagerly awaiting their turn to step in to an ecological bus to take them to the Park as private vehicles are not permitted inside. The sighting of the Kurinji had been a disappointment both in Ottacamumd and Munnar till the eco- bus took us deep inside the Eravikulam National Park and lead us for our eyes to feast on one of the best sights of our lives.

The first sight of the blooming Kurinji flower left us spell bound and wonder struck. There were millions of bell shaped, bright purple in colour flowers blooming in clusters on the slope of the hills giving it a bluish tinge to the air. We watched the rolling hills as far as the eyes could see, ostensibly bathed in purplish blue with the  mist around the hills adding  to the mystery, a rare sight to the eyes.  

It was more of a fairytale land and we almost pinched  ourselves to wake us up from this wonderful dream but the reality was the sprawling hills draped themselves in a purplish blue blanket.  The mere sight took away our breadth and indeed we felt blessed and fortunate that we could view this exceptional ecological event which takes places after a gap of twelve years in our country, India.

 I think it is our collective responsibility to negate the loss to Mother Nature by maintaining a ecological balance of human settlement and plantations in the regions where the Neelakurinji blooms. The next bloom is slated for the year 2018 and we hope with all our efforts, we will have not only have a better flowering season but also increase in number of locations where this wonderful event may be witnessed by one and all or else The Neelakurinji will only be a dream for the coming generations.