Notes from Kurumba country

In November 2016, I heard from the Kurumba people in the Silent Valley National Park area that they were collecting a forest produce called nila bomb, which literally translates to land bomb! In an area that is being highly policed for Maoist activity I thought they meant land mines! But of course it was a flowering plant, which looks more like a fungus and has a very interesting natural history. Though I meant to read up more about this after my visit to Silent Valley, I did not get a chance till I went on a botanising trip with a senior botanist from ATREE, almost two weeks later. At a tea stop near a small riparian stretch of forest in the Nilgiris we spotted the nila bomb again. Now I just had to find out more about this interesting and curious looking plant which is a flowering plant and not a fungus.

Balanophora fungosa Forster & Forster ssp. indica (Arn.) B. Hansen var. indica, belongs to the family Balanophoraceae and is a root parasite found in the hills of south India. Also called Spongy Balanophora it is a small leafless plant, and resembles a fungus with a large rounded head. The female flowers form a densely packed cone with the male flowers clustered below them: the flowers appear mostly in December (though some appear as late as March in the Palani hills). The plant is usually found amongst litter on the forest floor and lacks chlorophyll and hence dependent on its host for nutrients. The Balanophora family of flowering plants, which includes about 18 genera containing more than 100 species of root parasites are distributed throughout the tropics. Spongy Balanophora is found in coastal forests, from sea level up to 900 m in South India, Indonesia, Japan, New Guinea, Philippines, Australia, and Pacific Islands.

The Balanophoraceae family belong to the order Santalales, the latter name derived from its type genus Santalum (sandalwood) and a number of parasitic plants belonging to the order. Balanophora fungosa is a holoparasite (a total parasite) while Santalum album (Sandalwood) is a hemi parasite (partly a parasite but capable of photosynthesis).

Balanophoraceae species attach their tuberous rhizomes (underground stems) to the roots of host trees by means of highly modified roots (haustoria), used to suck up water and nutrients pass from the host. Plants of the genera Balanophora and Langsdorffia contain an inflammable waxy material, and the stems have been used as candles in South America. The rhizomes of these plants are sometimes processed to produce wax, but the plants are not abundant enough for commercial wax production.

Balanophora fungosa is included in the negative list, restricted and prohibited for export in India. The (whole) processed plant is found in the drug market as a substitute for Gajapippali (Scindapsus officinalis). There are records of this plant being used by a few tribal communities in South Tamil Nadu, viz. Paliyars, to treat skin ailments. The tribal people of Silent Valley were obviously gathering the plant to sell to the medicinal plant trader. This is the story of many a forest produce that is collected or harvested: neither is its conservation status understood, nor is the use clearly studied. And in the meantime the harvest and trade continue.