Question

Answer the following question briefly and to the point.
Name a plant which flowers every twelve years.

Answer 1

Hint: There is a plant which belongs to shrub which is found in shoal forests of the Western Ghats in South India. These shrubs bear purplish-blue flowers of those blossoms once in 12 years and the Nilgiri hills are referred to as these shrubs of the plant.

Complete answer: Neelakurinji is a shrub that bears purplish blue flowers in the Nilgiri hills and blossoms once in 12 years. There are other kurinji species like Strobilanthes cuspidatus which bloom once every seven years and then die. Their seeds sprout and continue the cycle of life and death. These shrubs grow at an altitude of 1300 to 2400 metres and have a height of 30 to 60 cm. These plants belong to the family Acanthaceae and genus Strobilanthes which was described by Christian Gottfried Daniel Nees von Esenbeck.
-Plants that blossom after a long interval are known as planetesimals like Strobilanthes kunthiana. Other traits shown by planetesimals includes mast seeding, flowering, and supra-annual synchronized semelparity. Kurinji was once found to cover Cardamom hills, Anamalai hills, Palani hills, Bababudangiri, and Nilgiri hills. There is Kurinjimala Sanctuary that protects the kurinji habitat in Vattavada and Kottakamboor villages in Kerala. The masting is referred to as a mass seeding phenomenon and some individuals only reproduce once during their lifetime and die.

Note: Kurinji flowers are associated with the mountainous landscape where it blossoms in classical Tamil literature. These flowers are also included in the historical novel, Kurinji flowers by Clare Flynn which represents neelakurinji as a backdrop to tragic love affairs in the 1940s in India.