The Indian flora, so unlike that of Central Asia, together with the difference of climate, gave a very distinctive character to the Hindu and Buddhist garden. Strange as it may seem, there are few wild flowers found growing in the Indian plains; for there, even in winter, the fierce sun burns into the soil. But the flower patches of the northern hills and meadows are replaced by deep-rooted blossoming trees, and these make up to some extent for the absence of the smaller herbaceous plants. Their leafless boughs and bare twigs burst into gorgeous flowering in the hot Indian spring, till the jungle glows like English beech and elm woods on a clear autumn day. Then in the plains there is the second flowering, the season of the rains, when the rank green growth chokes all but the tall grasses and ferns, and the lotus flowers with their lovely curving leaves completely hide the surface of the ponds. Creepers flourish in the damp dripping forests, where the gnarled twisted limbs of the old mangoes are fringed with sweet scented orchid sprays, as if swarms of little mauve and yellow butterflies were fluttering down to settle in the shadows of the trees. But the orchids of the Himalayan forests and Nilghiri hills, in spite of their strange beauty of form and colour, failed to win a place in the Indian garden. Even that wonderful lily, the Gloriosa superba, seems to have passed unnoticed, and the rose, although a wild flower in the north-western mountains, did not find its way into Hindu parterres until after the Mohammedan conquest. Amaranth and the tulsi, 'Holy Basil,' are practically the only herbaceous flowers mentioned in the old Indian stories and plays.
