Neelakurinji Flowering Season, 2018 - A blossom in 12 years!
The long wait of twelve years is finally over.
The hills will soon be bathed in a dreamy shade of blue from July 2018 to October 2018.
Are you ready?
Neelakurinji Flower – History
The Neelakurinji (Strobilanthes kunthiana), that blossoms only once in 12 years, carpeting the hill slopes during the flowering season. It is believed that the Paliyan tribal people apparently used it to calculate their age, basis the blooming of the Neelakurinji flower. The wild flower grows at a height of 30 to 60 cm on hills slopes at an altitude of 1300 to 2400 meters where there is little or no tree forest. The flower has no smell or any medicinal value. The famed Niligiri Hills, which literally means the Blue Mountains, got their name from the purplish blue Neelakurinji flowers.
Neelakurinji represents the self awakening of a woman, as in the Tamil traditions a girl is considered to attain sexual maturity at the age of 12, for the Todas blossoming into womanhood had a poetic identification with the flower, for the Badagas at their funeral litany asked for forgiveness for the sin botching the plant, for the poets it is a symbol of longing for love and happiness, for the tribal Kurinji is the symbol of love and romance
During the bloom there is a manifold increase of bees in the vicinity. Immense amount of honey become available and the rock bees and common hill bees visit the plant. It is also believed that the honey near the blossoms is the sweetest.
A lot of mythological significance is attributed to the flower. Both the Muthuvas of Munnar and the Todas of the Nilgiris consider the flowering of Kurinji as auspicious. However there are taboos that prevent them from destroying the plant or its withered twigs until the seeds mature ten months after the flowering.
As the saying goes, it is an auspicious time to be when the Neelakurinji flowers and it is believed to bring prosperity in the wake. A Club Mahindra Holiday advertisement said it well “A beauty of nature, rare, elusive, stunning. She teases, she tempts, and she only reveals what she wants you to see. She is Neelakurinji – a flower which blooms once in twelve years”.
When the kurinji bush blooms, it has a profuse display of violet blue flowers that cover the entire plant. The blossoms spread out as a blanket on the hill sides of the Annamalai, Nilgiris and Palani ( Kodaikanal) hills. It beautifully decorates mountain sides in the Western Ghats of South India, and the spectacular and picturesquely sight is to behold for rest of our lives. It does not grow in any part of the world making itself a rarest of the rare. The last bloom of Neelakurinji was in the year 2006 and the next is this year.
If Munnar is on your wish list, 2018 is the best year to visit it. This hugely popular hill station in Kerala is getting ready for the next flowering reason of Neelakurinji (Strobilanthes Kunthiana). When the plants bloom they wrap the misty hills in a thick purple blanket and enchant visitors from far and wide. Needless to say, during those years when these plants are in bloom Munnar witnesses record number of visitors.
This year flowering season typically begins in July or August and lasts up to 3 months. There are around 40 varieties of Neelakurinji and most of them have blue or purple flowers. The plants mainly bloom in the Eravikulam National Park which is also home to the Nilgiri tahrs. Other places where one can find the blossoms are Kovilur, Kadavari and Rajamala. Many tour operators and adventure clubs organize trekking expeditions to places where you can find the flowers in abundance.