Walk through the dense nature trails this month at the conservation centre of the Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS) in Goregaon, Mumbai, and you will see something unique. The forest is awash with the rich, purple hue of the elusive Karvi flower, which blooms only once in eight years. Stare at this mesmerizing sea of purple flowers, and you will think back to what you were doing eight years ago when they last bloomed, and wonder what life has in store for you eight years from now at the next flowering. But the story of this peculiar flower, endemic to the Western Ghats, Madhya Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra and Karnataka, is inextricably intertwined with the life of a remarkable man, Rev. Hermenegild Santapau, the Spaniard who became an Indian citizen.
Born at La Galera, Tarragona, Spain, in 1903, Santapau became a Jesuit priest at the age of 16. After getting his PhD at London University in Botany, Santapau joined St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai, as a professor of Botany in 1940. He was a member of many learned societies and scientific bodies, including BNHS itself – he served as the botanical editor of the journal of BNHS between 1950-68 and as Vice President of the society in 1954. He was also the Director of the Botanical Survey of India between 1961-68. For his painstaking work on Indian flora, he was awarded the Padma Shri by the Government of India in 1967 and the Civil Order of Alphonso X the Wise, by the Spanish government.
In the meantime, the Karvi plant had attracted the attention of European scientists in the 1940s. In 1944, a Dutch botanist by the name of Cornelius Eliza Bertus Bremekamp (1888-1984) classified this curious flowering plant as Carvia Callosa: the Latinized term “Carvia” was derived from the vernacular “karvi”. Bremekamp placed these plants in the category of “plietesials” – monocarpic plants which flower once after several years of growth and die shortly thereafter. Another taxonomist used the classification Strobilanthes Callosus.
During his extensive field work in India, Santapau first came across the flowering Karvi in Khandala in September 1942. He spotted only a few Karvi flowers that year at Echo Point and the Bhoma Hills. However, the following year, he was astounded by what he called a “veritable riot of flowers”. Buds appeared in June and the hillsides “seemed covered with a pinkish hue”. Between August-October, the flower opened its petals, and the color scheme changed to a “rich cobalt blue”. “[W]ith its dense foliage”, he later wrote in a paper published in the BNHS Journal, the Karvi plant “shades every other plant out of existence.”
Santapau was perhaps one of the first botanists to systematically record the flowering patterns of the gregarious Karvi. In an article he wrote in 1962, Santapau explained that the plant flowered every 6-8 years, though opinions were divided on the subject. “As a rule”, he wrote, “one year a few scattered plants come into flower; the following year there may be a general flowering; the third year a few scattered plants again come into flower. In short, there is a general flowering one year, preceded and followed by reduced flowering of a few plants.” In other words, Santapau noticed that while there may have been an abundance of Karvi flowers one year, this was usually preceded and followed by a few scattered Karvi plants flowering the previous and subsequent year respectively.
Santapau was perplexed by this uncanny plant and the family to which it belonged. Why do Karvi and other Strobilanthes plants flower “after so many years of vegetative growth”, he asked himself. Further, what caused them to flower at “one and the same time”? “I have been trying to find an answer to these questions,” he candidly admitted to his readers in the pages of the BNHS journal he edited, “but regretfully I have to say that up to the present there is no satisfactory answer.” He concluded on a note of resignation: “We say, then, in all honesty that simply we do not know what internal or external forces move these plants singly or individually to come into flower; we do not know what natural forces induce Strobilanthes plants to burst into flower over large areas of the country at one and the same time.”
In January 1970, some eight years after the publication of his paper on Strobilanthes Callosus in the BNHS journal, Santapau breathed his last. It was Prime Minister Indira Gandhi who paid him the most fitting tribute: “In Rev. Fr. Santapau’s death”, she said, “we have lost an eminent scholar who has served education and science for over 40 years.” “His deep love for India”, she added, “urged him to become a citizen of the country. He had a great knowledge of, and concern for, our plant wealth and wrote intensively on it for experts and laymen. May his memory continue to inspire all those interested in our flora.” Santapau is no longer with us, but there is once again a “veritable riot” of beautiful Karvi flowers this year blooming in abundance, waiting to be seen, photographed and experienced by the next generation of budding botanists and nature enthusiasts.
Abhinav Chandrachud is an advocate who practices at the Bombay High Court
In 1944, a Dutch botanist by the name of Cornelius Eliza Bertus Bremekamp (1888-1984) classified this curious flowering plant as Carvia Callosa: the Latinized term “Carvia” was derived from the vernacular “karvi”. (TheNomadic/Wikimedia Commons) 
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