UTS Voice
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SEASONS :- Leaves begin to a fall in mid March, starting from the tops of trees; new pink leaves emerge quickly afterwards. Canopy renewed by early April. Flowers in second week of April, peaking in the fourth week, Fruit follow quickly, ripening and dropping in July.
WHERE TO SEE IT Akbar Road, Lodi Road, Prithviraj Road, Aurangzeb Road are lined exclusively or predominantly with neem. The IARI( campus, Pusa, also has neem avenues . common in parks and on the Ridge, notably in untended ravines inside JNU and Jaunapur.
FLOWERS :-White, in short, branching clusters emerging form leaf axils. Bisexual and purely male flowers are usually found on the same tree. The flowers open in the afternoon, with a delicate honey scent that is strongest at night. A flower has 5 slender, spreading petals and 10 stamens fused into a central column.
LEAVES :- feather-compound, up to 40 cm long, crowded at the ends of twigs. A leaf has 4-8 pairs of pointy leaflets with a solitary terminal leaflet (sometimes missing). The leaflets are slightly curved, with toothed margins. New leaves start out a subtle tint of pink, darkening to a shiny green.
FRUIT :- up to 2 cm long,, with a thin pulp enclosing a hard stone. Green at first, bright yellow when ripe.
BARK :- thick, rough. Outer bark dark grayish-brown, scabby and riven with vertical furrows. It grows more flaky with age. Rufous brown on the inside.
HABITAT :- Tolerates drought and most soils but avoids sites prone to frost and water logging. Ideal conditions for neem are well-drained, deep, sandy soils and annual rainfall between 450 and 1000 mm. Tress can live up to 200 years or more.
RANGE :- Its precise wild origins are obscure- most likely a region in N Myanmar near the Assam-Bangladesh border. It is now thoroughly naturalized in most of India, even appearing wild as an escape from cultivation. Neem was carried to Fiji, Guyana and Mauritius by Indian immigrants in the 19th century and to sub-Saharan Africa by British colonists.
USES :- Most parts of the tree are credited with medicinal value, even the watery exudation from the trunk known as ‘neem toddy’. The seeds yield a yellow bitter oil used to treat leprosy, skin diseases, ulcers, rheumatism and has many other uses that no summary can do justice to. The principal active compound in the leaves- ‘azad-irachtin’ – repels insects. A 19th –century treatise says the leaves are ‘much used by holy men to help them resist the allurements of beauty’. Neem wood is handsome, hard and durable and is much used in the countryside. Leaves of neem tree are bitter in taste but its patent is very sweet.
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