Seed to Seed : Know your Channa dal/Bengal gram through leaves and flowers Again

We are back with Channa dal/ Bengal gram plants again, because we want to show you the beautiful pods which we missed last time.

Summarizing, the earlier post on Channa dal showed, how the seeds underwent hypogeal germination to beautiful plants with compound leaves and lilac coloured flowers

The channa plant starts with a single stem with alternate array of compound leaves. Soon it branches out making the plant spread out and look bushy. These pictures are from the new sets of experiments.

When the plants were about 40 days old, the first bud was noticed. The bud is shown with an arrow head.

Soon more buds appeared. Each bud opened up to a beautiful lilac colour flower.

The first few flowers bloomed and withered. But new buds and new flowers continued to blossom, keeping our hopes alive.

When the plant was about 55 days old, one little withered flower showed up a tiny pod at its base. That was our first pod. It is shown with an arrowhead.

Three days later, the tiny pod grew bigger and the second pod came up. Shown with an arrow head.

Seven days later both the pods became prominent.

Slowly more pods appeared on the main stem.

After 35 days the first and the second pods matured and began to turn brown.

The first four pods were left on the plant for about 45 days to mature. The green pods turned to light brown. The leaves of the plant also turned brown. There are still some green pods.