Extinction does happen every once in a while, just as the dinosaurs who were the dominant species on the face of the Earth simply disappeared one day, leaving only fossils to excavate. Every year, a few species of flora and fauna do find their places on the extinct and on the endangered lists. Yet, by and large, Nature has a way of preserving her biodiversity. Almost always, she finds a way to rebound, to come back, in the midst of a constant kaleidoscopic change in the rivers of time.
On this patch of land, five years ago, I had planted a number of elephant foot yams before the rains. Giant plants came up during the monsoon, and at the end of six months, we got a fantastic crop of huge yams. Since then, that patch of land was left fallow and soon got covered with weeds, except for some mango trees which, enjoying the natural ground cover, grew nicely and bore fruit. Last month, I cleared the weeds to collect the mangoes. Then came the rains. Today, my son and I went up there to collect the last few sweet mangoes of the season. We were surprised to see little elephant foot yam plants springing up all over the place.
Perhaps, five years ago, the mother plants had left little nodules in the soil while they were dug up. Evidently, nature had shielded them from all harm, hibernating safely in her bosom for half a decade, until the conditions were right for their germination. With the weeds gone, a bath of nitrogen rich rain water had triggered them awake, raring to grow to their full potential.
Who knows? Maybe one day, nature may reveal the secrets of reviving lost species to our devoted scientists and we may yet find the gentle dodo rubbing feathers with the fowls in our farms!
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