Matheran - Wildflower Paradise near Mumbai

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My Matheran photos on Flickr:

This is about several overnight and day visits in 2008, 2009, 2010 and 2011 to enjoy Matheran's scenery, plentiful wildflowers, and their attendant butterflies. Mid and post monsoons sees them at their optimal best. Karvies are abundant, along with several rarer species of Western Ghats flora.

February and March are good months to see flowering trees. Matheran's pride, the Anjan or Memecylon Umbellatum flowers at this time.

Matheran is a designated biosphere, an isolated preserve of evergreen forest atop a 700m high plateau of the Western Ghats, close to Mumbai. Being protected, most of the flora is intact. Sadly the same cannot be said for its original fauna.

Today mostly monkeys prevail, wily bonnet macaques who lie in wait to snatch food from unsuspecting tourists, and the gentle golden langurs seen in the forests. If you are lucky you may also see the Giant Squirrel - Ratufa Indica Elphinstonii, they emit a distinctive rattle like call. In all our visits, we have seen the Muntjac deer just once. The wildflowers are happily, always there!

2008 rewarded us with the best of the mass blooming of purple Strobilanthes Callosa [Karvy - Carvia Callosa] and their attendant butterflies and insects. Karvy blooms once every 4-7 years and a mass blooming is spectacular to behold. Matheran is blessed with several large tracts of Karvy, so one can expect to see at least some in mass bloom every year. 2008 witnessed a spectacular large scale mass blooming especially around Panorama Point.

In addition to Karvy, Matheran boasts a wide variety of wildflowers, most notably of the Acanthaceae and Lamiaceae species. The best time to enjoy them is from August to February, when every week sees something new in bloom on Matheran's many hillsides and grasslands. Mid August to mid December is optimal.

Matheran's wild orchids bloom during the rains. Eria, Malaxis, Peristylus and Habenaria are amongst the orchid species found here. There may well be more, but these are what I have seen.

The unusual Gnetum Scandens liana vine blooms from January onward and the many Anjani trees - Memecylon Umbellatum - are bedecked in purple blossoms between end Jan and April.

I have also posted a separate entry about the popular Matheran Railway or Toy Train as it is better known. The railway track makes an interesting trek path during the rains when the train does not ply.

My Flickr set of Matheran Flora is at: http://www.flickr.com/groups/floraofmatheran/

An interesting old British map of Matheran from 1924: http://homepages.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~poyntz/India/images/Matheran1924.jpg

The full text of "Matheran Hill: Its People, Plants and Animals" by John Young Smith, first published by Thacker in 1881 is available at: http://www.archive.org/stream/matheranhillits00smitgoog/matheranhillits00smitgoog_djvu.txt