Enchanted Forest: Ode to the Old Sal Community

Naturalist and guide Naveen Upadhyay grew up in Kyari, a small village on the peripheries of Sitabani Wildlife Reserve, Uttarakhand. On a pleasant April morning, he leads me over a huge log lying across a nullah running by Khichdi, a river that gets its name from a conglomeration of many streams and rivulets in the vicinity. “I saw this tree fall during a storm as a child,” he tells me. “We have used it as a bridge ever since.”

There’s a popular saying in Uttarakhand, “Sal, sau saal khada, sau saal padaa, sau saal sadaa” (a sal tree grows for 100 years, stays on the forest floor for 100 years, and rots for a 100), he says. While the proverb is a testament to the sal’s long life and durability, it sells the tree short. The sal stands tall for much longer, nurturing everything in its vicinity.  

The sal (Shorea robusta) is found in two belts across India. One along the foothills of the Himalayas, where I stand with Upadhyay. The other stretches like a curve in Central India, cutting across West Bengal, Odisha, and ending in Chhattisgarh. A small, isolated patch is found in the Satpuras. In Central India, it dominates the landscapes of Kanha and Bandhavgarh national parks. In Uttarakhand, about 60 per cent of Jim Corbett National Park and almost all of Sitabani Wildlife Reserve and Pawalgarh Conservation Reserve is dominated by the tree. 

As we walk into Sitabani Wildlife Reserve buffer zone, a curtain lifts. The air turns damp and cool, and within a few metres, sal trees surround us on all sides, inviting us into their world. The sal tree is perhaps one of India’s most gregarious species. It grows in large communities that dominate vast areas, making room for a select few others to grow in its shade. But it nurtures a host of wild creatures — rare, common, endangered.

We spend days walking quietly through sal forests that stretch as far as the eye can see, keeping our eyes and ears peeled. In the past, I have sped through sal forests in safari jeeps; this time, I watch, smell and listen closely. I notice what looks like a uniform stretch of emerald and ebony at first glance is far from it. Young and old sals live together. Towering old ones have grand green crowns and stout trunks with deep furrows, like the wrinkles on my grandmother’s arms. The younger ones are lankier, with smoother barks and few or no branches, as if they are conserving all energy to race to the top and reach the sun. At the top, young and old meet to form a dense, intersecting canopy that only lets soft, dappled light through.

At every other bend, I spot a dead sal, standing just as proudly. One, in particular, has seven neatly carved holes lined one after another. “This is prime property,” says Upadhyay. The dead sal trees in a state of slow decay are softer and easier to carve holes in. Ridden with termites and insects, they offer tenants a buffet. Woodpeckers dig holes that are often used and reused by a host of birds — mynahs, hornbills, barbets, squirrels, etc. In reserved forests, where dead sals are not chopped, they turn into landmarks in an otherwise unmarked forest. I recall the legendary “Mota Sal” of Corbett, one of the largest and oldest in the forest. Years ago, it was struck by lightning, leaving behind a fat, burnt dead stump that lies where the grassland meets the forest. It remains an iconic spot, where safari jeeps make a beeline to spot the elusive tiger. At one of the entrances of Kanha National Park, Madhya Pradesh, two sal stumps on either side of the road greet visitors. Fondly called “raja” and “rani”, the stumps are worshipped by locals and others.

Upadhyay and I walk along the firelines that cut through the forest. Here the sal trees that normally stand tall bend gently in search of sunlight, meeting in the middle, forming a green archway to walk through. March-April is the best time to visit this forest, Upadhyay says. The fresh leathery leaves of spring paint the forest neon green, and wispy white flowers rain on you. The forest floor is a whole different palette and story. Dry leaves in shades of brown, red, and ochre that crunch and crackle underfoot are an ecosystem of their own. The Adivasis of Central India, says Upadhyay, use sal leaves to roll cigars. Upadhyay digs out a brown, flower-like thing from the leaf litter. “Helicopter,” he says, grinning. It’s a sal seed with unmistakable wings. Sal seeds are aerodynamic wonders that are carried great distances. Dispersed by the wind, they germinate far from the parent tree.

For me, the stars of this forest floor are the termite mounds — kingdoms with large castles and underground passages. Unlike other trees, sal is resistant to termites. However, it is this attribute that has been the sal’s downfall. British botanists and foresters identified the termite-resistant sal as a great resource, and in the 1850s, it became the perfect timber for the ambitious Great Indian Peninsular Railway. Entire forests were hacked to lay down millions of cubic feet of sal sleepers along railway lines. Electric poles across the country were built from its sturdy wood.

But the colonial foresters failed at one thing — at replanting sal. Though they tried, they soon realised that a sal forest, unlike teak — another extremely rich and useful timber — cannot be artificially regenerated. It’s a mystery that remains unsolved. The stubborn tree only grows on its own volition, in a very specific biome and with its own kind, creating kilometres of dense forests like a single super-organism. 

Teak soon replaced sal in parts where sal forests were hacked. Teak is a tropical hardwood but it is not endemic to the region. But because of its rich timber value and easy growth, the British planted tracts of it across Uttarakhand as a monoculture for profit. On another day, as I take a different route into a sal forest along the peripheries of Pawalgarh Conservation Reserve, we travel through a teak plantation. The patch seems oddly disciplined, ghost-like and eerie. The teak sheds its large leaves in April, creating dry, bare, brown forests. Nothing grows on the floor, and there are fewer birds. But as it gives way to the adjacent sal forest, I realise how generous the sal is — though it dominates, it makes room for others. I spot a kusum (Schleichera)— its flaming foliage burns fiery reds and orange in April. It welcomes rohini (Mallotus philippensis), a small tree that grows in its shade, whose leaves are a favourite among elephants. The forest is alive with birdsong.     

New research increasingly emphasises that forests are not just collections of trees, but sentient communities that support, communicate and nurture each other like a large family. Pradip Krishen writes lovingly of the sal in the preface to The Hidden Life of Trees by Peter Wohlleben, a simply-written path-breaking book on how trees feel and interact. “You won’t find a sal tree growing in a park, for instance, nor will you encounter an avenue of sal trees. Foresters tell us that sal trees die of ‘loneliness’ when they are planted singly,” he writes. The Wildlife Institute of India in Dehradun was built on a cleared sal forest, he goes on. One by one, the sal trees isolated by the construction began to die, baffling experts. Standing at the centre of the sal forest, it all makes sense. A sal is not just a tree but a community, just like ours, that feels, loves, and nurtures.