Excerpt: ‘WILD HIMALAYA: A Natural History of the Greatest Mountain Range on Earth’
Photo courtesy: Stephen Alter
Stephen Alter’s Wild Himalaya: A Natural History of the Greatest Mountain Range on Earth was published in August. The book has been acclaimed for bringing the beauty, grandeur, and complexity of the wondrous Himalayan range to life. Here’s an excerpt, where Alter delves deep into the world of an unlikely predator: the carnivorous sundew.
STALKING THE CARNIVOROUS SUNDEW
Photo: Aleph Book Company
A number of bloodthirsty creatures inhabit Jabarkhet Nature Reserve (JNR), near our home in Landour. Not the least of these are leeches, during the monsoon. There are also yellow-throated martens, leopard cats, foxes, jackals and panthers but the only animals that really worry me are bears. Unlike the other predators that can sense our approach and slip away into the leafy shadows, Himalayan black bears (Ursus thibetanus) are less attentive and short-tempered. In winter, particularly, there’s always a chance of stumbling upon one at dawn or dusk, though they usually move about after dark, mauling the oaks for acorns.
Today, however, we are going in search of another predator, Drosera peltata. This patient hunter lies in wait on grassy, sunlit slopes and traps its unsuspecting victims when they touch its deadly tendrils. A fine coating of sticky mucous helps the killer grip its struggling prey. Sundew is an insectivorous plant genus, of which there are almost 200 different species worldwide. It feeds on tiny gnats and midges for whom it must be a terrifying monster with dozens of limbs and ferocious jaws. Even worse, it begins digesting its victims before they are dead.
Leading our expedition is Dr Gopal Rawat, one of the foremost authorities on Himalayan plants. As dean of the Wildlife Institute of India (WII) in Dehradun, Rawat doesn’t get out in the field as much as he’d like but is always happy to trade his coat and tie for a bush shirt and binoculars, leaving behind the stacks of files and reports on his desk. A walking encyclopedia, Dr Rawat makes an ordinary landscape come to life with facts and stories. Being from the Himalaya himself, he has an intimate connection to the land. His ancestral village is near Munsiyari in the north-east corner of Kumaon.
This patient hunter lies in wait on grassy, sunlit slopes and traps its unsuspecting victims when they touch its deadly tendrils. A fine coating of sticky mucous helps the killer grip its struggling prey. Sundew is an insectivorous plant genus, of which there are almost 200 different species worldwide.
At the entrance to JNR, Rawat points out a tree, about 5 metres high, Euonymus tingens, with numerous branches and dense, glossy foliage. Known in the hills as kum kum it has medicinal properties and is used both as a purgative and for curing eye infections. The inner bark, Rawat explains, is a yellow colour and is used for dyeing textiles and, in parts of Kumaon, as a substitute for chandan tika applied on the forehead as a part of worship. Another species he identifies is Daphne papyracea, a sturdy shrub with long, tapered leaves. This plant was traditionally used for making paper. Its fibrous inner bark, or bast, is collected and soaked then beaten into a pulp, after which it is spread out in sheets to dry. Though Daphne paper is seldom made any more, it was once used for important documents and ledgers, as well as janampatris or birth charts and horoscopes. Today, it is still produced in Bhutan, at the Jungshi Handmade Paper Company in Thimphu, where traditional methods are employed.Yet, here in Uttarakhand, Daphne serves a more immediate, practical purpose for grass cutters, who strip away the strong, supple bark and use it to tie up bundles of fodder.
Rawat is an expert on the relationship between flora and fauna, studying the kinds of alpine grasses and plants that support different species of birds and animals from leaf warblers to high-altitude ungulates. While his colleagues and students at WII are busy putting radio collars on snow leopards or camera-trapping tigers, Rawat focuses on critical links further down the food chain. His primary interests lie in those plants that are consumed by herbivores though the object of our quest today is a form of Himalayan flora that is uniquely non-vegetarian.
Much of Rawat’s research has focused on bugiyals, or alpine meadows, which are seasonal pastures for herds of sheep, goats and buffaloes. ‘Bugh or Bughi, means fodder plant or grass,’ he explains. ‘And each of these bughis form profuse herbaceous meadows that the shepherds identify by distinct names. There is dudh bughi, dhaniya bughi, sun bughi but the best plant for grazing animals is known as bas bughi. The shepherds say that if their flocks feed on bas bughi for three weeks, it is equivalent to eating other plants for three months.’
Further on we come to a swathe of yellow and pink balsam, which has just finished blooming, though it still adds colour to the hillside. The seedpods are tiny bean-like capsules that explode when touched, which is why they have the generic name Impatiens.
‘Shepherds warn you to stay away from balsam patches when the seeds are ripe because the bears are attracted to them,’ Rawat recounts. ‘They’ll sit in the middle of a patch and use their arms and paws to burst the pods.’ He gestures with both hands as if shovelling the popping seeds into his mouth.
Jabarkhet Nature Reserve is a hundred acres of private land adjoining a large tract of government forest. It consists mostly of the south-west face of a protruding ridge known as Flag Hill. The predominant trees in this forest are Quercus leucotrichophora, Rhododendron arboreum and Lyonia ovalifolia. In Garhwali these are known as banj, burans and anyar. From Western Nepal, through Kumaon, Garhwal and Himachal Pradesh, these three species dominate this crucial band of foliage in the elevation between 1,800 and 2,500 metres, which corresponds with the highest year-round settlements in the Central Himalaya. Though herders take their animals much further up in summer, few permanent villages and towns are situated above 2,500 metres, except for religious sites and trading posts on the way to Tibet.
Drosera peltata aka Sundew - Photo: Jabarkhet Nature Reserve
Running a hand over the soft, spongy surface of a rhododendron trunk, Rawat shows us charred sections from a forest fire several years ago, explaining that the bark is a natural flame retardant that protects and insulates the tree. On the slope nearby is a species of wild gerbera (Gerbera gossypina), known as kapas in Garhwali. The underside of the leaves has a thin, white membrane that can be peeled off like sunburnt skin. In the past this was collected and dried for use as tinder, because it ignites easily from a spark of flint.
As in other parts of the Lower Himalaya, several exotic or invasive species have taken root on Flag Hill, partly because of an old ‘working plan’ that the owners employed under the supervision of the forest department. These arboreal interlopers are mostly conifers—blue pine (Pinus wallichiana), chir pine (Pinus longifolia), and a few exotic cypresses (Cupressus arizonica and C. lusitanica) all of which were planted less than a hundred years ago and have spread through self-seeding. In addition to these, JNR has plenty of horse chestnuts, dogwoods, wild cherries and wild pears, all of which make it a healthy mixed forest. But the most aggressive alien species is Eupatorium adenophorum, a waist-high weed native to Mexico and Central America. Nobody is entirely sure how Eupatorium arrived in India, though it has infiltrated almost every part of the Lower Himalaya. Rawat suggests that the plant’s seeds probably came here by accident in a shipment, years ago, to ports in Burma or Bengal from where it spread rapidly into the mountains. In Garhwal Eupatorium is known as kala ghaas, or black grass, because of its dark stems. In many places, including parts of JNR, it has covered hillsides and choked out indigenous species. Neither wild nor domesticated animals eat its leaves and after a forest fire, kala ghaas is one of the first species to recover.
Along our path, we find leopard scat, as well as pellets of barking deer dung that look like dry dog food and the droppings of a yellow-throated marten, containing fragments of bone, eggshells and hair, evidence of its eclectic diet. Martens are some of the most opportunistic predators, constantly hunting through trees and hillsides for bird nests, rodents and reptiles. By comparison, Drosera peltata is a finicky eater.
Drosera means ‘dew of the sun’, and it gets this name because the mucilage on its leaves is similar to tiny drops of dew.This saliva-like substance not only traps insects but also contains acids that work as digestive juices. After a victim is captured, the leaf closes around it and consumes the insect, drawing nutrients from its prey rather than the soil.
Charles Darwin wrote an entire book on Drosera, titled Insectivorous Plants, in which he focuses on a common species of sundew found in England. During the summer of 1860, Darwin conducted a variety of experiments on a heath in Sussex to determine how the plant reacted to different stimuli as well as testing the chemistry of its deadly secretions. He writes:
When an insect alights on the central disk (of the leaf), it is instantly entangled by the viscid secretion, and the surrounding tentacles after a time begin to bend, and ultimately clasp it on all sides... It is surprising how minute an insect suffices to cause this action: for instance, I have seen one of the smallest species of gnats (Culex), which had just settled with its excessively delicate feet on the glands of the outermost tentacles, and these were already beginning to curve inwards, though not a single gland had as yet touched the body of the insect... Whether insects alight on the leaves by mere chance, as a resting place, or are attracted by the odour of the secretion I know not. I suspect from the number of insects caught by the English species of Drosera, and from what I have observed with some exotic species kept in my greenhouse, that the odour is attractive. In this latter case the leaves may be compared with a baited trap; in the former case with a trap laid in a run frequented by game, but without any bait.
Photo: Stephen Alter
Darwin tested the plant’s reflexes by exposing it to both heat and cold as well as a number of substances including morsels of meat, cork, human hairs, splinters of glass and even gluten (to which the plant seems to have been allergic, for its leaves quickly withered and turned black). What fascinated Darwin most of all was the way in which the plant sent signals through the tendrils on its leaves. ‘Some influence does travel up to the glands, causing them to secrete more copiously, and the secretion to become acid. This latter fact is, I believe, quite new in the physiology of plants; it has indeed only recently been established that in the animal kingdom an influence can be transmitted along the nerves to glands, modifying their power of secretion...’
Towards the end of his career Darwin also wrote a book titled The Power of Movement in Plants. As he tested his theories of evolution and natural selection, he recognized that Drosera was unique. Rather than being an insentient species, it operates through botanical impulses, similar to the reflexes of other predators, that allow it to catch and feed upon its prey. Rawat suggests that the plant probably emits some kind of pheromones that attract flies, though he feels that the glistening beads of mucous on the leaves could also lure insects.
Rather than being an insentient species, it operates through botanical impulses, similar to the reflexes of other predators, that allow it to catch and feed upon its prey. Rawat suggests that the plant probably emits some kind of pheromones that attract flies, though he feels that the glistening beads of mucous on the leaves could also lure insects.
‘Drosera grows in nitrogen-poor soil and usually in an open area where insects pass through,’ he explains.‘There are only a few insectivorous plants in India, including a species of pitcher plant in Meghalaya. Aside from Drosera, in the Himalaya, there is a species of bladderwort, Utricularia brachiate, and a butterwort Pinguicula alpina, both of which are carnivorous.’
As we make our way along the overgrown path through the nature reserve, I repeatedly check my ankles for leeches though the monsoon has almost ended and the clouds have disappeared overhead. Rawat leads us up a steep ridge fringed with bracken, the trail covered with slippery needles of blue pines. Eventually, we reach a lone oak at the edge of a clearing on the crest of the ridge. A few tiny gnats are circling in the sunlight and we can hear a chorus of cicadas.
Stepping cautiously forward, Rawat scans the open expanse of grass and weeds as if searching for pugmarks or a blood trail. Pausing, he beckons us forward and points at the ground. There, growing out of the rocky soil, amidst a dozen other species of plants, is a thin stem, twisting upward and branching off in several directions.The tiny white flowers are unassuming but the leaves fringed with fine hairs have a menacing appearance. Crouching, I can just make out the miniscule droplets of mucous. Two insects have been trapped by Drosera, one of which is nothing but a dry husk, several days old, though still ensnared in the predator’s green grasp. The other is a translucent fly the size of a pinhead. Struggling in the death grip of a salivating leaf that slowly clenches around it, this helpless creature succumbs to the botanical appetite of a ravenous sundew.
***
Stephen Alter is an award-winning author of twenty books of fiction and nonfiction, including Wild Himalaya: A Natural History of the Greatest Mountain Range on Earth, Becoming a Mountain: Himalayan Journeys in Search of the Sacred and the Sublime, and In The Jungles of the Night: A novel about Jim Corbett. He lives and writes in Mussoorie.
