The Phoenix rises again on Ahmednagar road

PUNE: The Phoenix, a sacred mythical bird, is believed to have lived for several centuries atop a date palm in the Arabian desert before rejuvenation. This date palm is known to be the oldest fruit-bearing tree on earth. Its evergreen crown signified prolonged life and its tall trunk was believed to have reached the heavens.
The Phoenix bird was mythical, but the date palm does exist and interestingly, its scientific name is Phoenix.The date palm is the popular 'khajoor' tree or Phoenix dactylifera.
Pune and its surroundings have a species of Phoenix palm which is locally known as 'shindi'. This palm grows wild in the hilly areas. The shindi palm is 10-15 metres tall. Its trunk is covered with armour like the broken bases of old leaves. The leaves are feather-compound, two or three metres long and greyish-green in colour. The leaflets are folded and spine-tipped. The leaves are beautifully arched to form an elegant spherical crown.
Phoenix palms bear unisexual flowers on separate trees. Fruits are orange and with edible pulp. They are much favoured by the locals. The hardy and durable leaves are used to weave mats and make brooms. The tender fruit-bearing stalk of the date palm is cut and a pot is attached under it to collect the juice which is consumed as a popular drink known as 'nira'. 'Tadi' is a fermented form of nira. The shindi or the Indian date palm is thus a tree of many economic uses. The date palm also exists in Pune near the Parsi Agyari in Nana Peth.
The Phoenix palm can be seen at many places in Pune but the best place to see it is at the beginning of Ahmednagar road at Yerawada. The road divider here has about a hundred fully-grown Phoenix palms. The splendour of these palms has made this part of the road the most beautiful in Pune. To compliment the grandeur of these palms, the southern side of this road has a line of the rare Barringtonia acutangula trees.
In keeping with its name, these palms seem to have rejuvenated here. All these date palms once grew in a wild area on the Sinhagad road where the P L Deshpande Udyan or the 'Pune Okayama Garden' has now come up. This low-lying area had a lot of water percolation from the adjoining canal which formed an ideal habitat for the palms. When this site was selected to develop a Japanese garden, these palms did not suit the theme of the new landscape.
At the same time, the newly-concretised Ahmednagar road was just getting ready with a wide road divider. Yashwant Khaire, the then garden superintendent of the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) got the bright idea of transplanting the date palms on the road divider.
Palms are ideally suited to transplantation. The palms were dug out from Sinhagad road and transplanted on the Ahmednagar road by using cranes and trucks. They have adapted to the new location beautifully and without any mortality. In modern landscaping, such full grown palms are available from big plant nurseries to make a landscape look transformed overnight. A hundred beautifully grown date palms otherwise would have cost PMC a fortune!