Why is it in News?

• Wildlife experts say the recent large-scale wildfires on the grassland could have wiped out all the seeds of the endemic flowers.

Neelakurinji:

• Kurinji or Neelakurinji is a shrub that is found in the shola forests of the Western Ghats in South India. Nilgiri Hills, which literally means the blue mountains, got their name from the purplish-blue flowers of Neelakurinji that blossoms only once in 12 years.

Endemic flowers:

• Endemism is the ecological state of a species being unique to a defined geographic location, such as an island, nation, country or other defined zone, or habitat type.

Sensitive seeds:

• Neelaakurinji seeds are sensitive without a hard cover and are unlikely to survive mass fire.
• The seeds, so small usually are distributed in the soil by January after the flowering season and by February they would get a soil cover through the summer rain.