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In 1986, the Kerala forest department took a decision that they would come to regret decades later. The social forestry wing of the department raised a few saplings, planted them in the forest office compound in the Wayanad Wildlife Sanctuary and by the side of the roads at Muthanga and Tholpetty areas in the Wayanad district, as shade trees. Little did they know that the trees they were nurturing were one of the worst invasive trees of tropical American origin. The tree had a notorious background of colonising many continents including parts of Asia, Africa and Australia.
By the time they came to realise the mistake, Senna spectabilis had done what every successful invasive plant would do; it had piggy-backed on mammals such as spotted deer and had sneaked into many parts of the sanctuary, invading a good part of it within a few decades. Senna or golden shower tree, as it is popularly called, owing to its bright yellow flowers, was recognised as an invasive by the Kerala forest department only in 2011 – 25 years after it was first planted in Wayanad.
In the early 2000s, Karnataka followed suit with the forest department actively promoting Senna, even planting the saplings in Bandipur and Nagarahole Tiger Reserves as a replacement for Lantana camara, another notoriously invasive plant that the protected areas across the country are fighting to contain. “They thought the new evergreen, fast-growing plant would be an ideal replacement for Lantana when it is removed,” G. Ravikanth, a senior fellow at Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE) in Bengaluru said.
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