Collecting Red Beads

I am not sure how Indians call this tree, but it is commonly known as "Red Bead Tree" or "Red Lucky Seed" in English. In Sri Lanka, we call them "Maara". My story is not about the origin of the Red Bead Tree but about my evening visit to collect Red Beads with my little brother.

He is my cousin and he is just 10 years old. I am 15 years older than him, but still couldn't control my childish mind to go with him to pick red beads. When my little cousin visits my place, he brings a bag full of things including electronic parts, wood parts, boxes, buttons, beads, and toy vehicles. Recently he used to transport buttons using his plastic truck. So I decided to help him to collect some natural beads to transport using his truck service.

We had to walk few meters from our house. Even though he is shorter, he walks faster than me. It took 4-5 minutes for us to reach the tree. This tree was here even when I was small. Even in villages, Red Bead Trees are now rare. If you don't know them before, the red bead tree is a tall tree with pinnately compound leaves.

_{Pinnately compound leaves}

It has a bright red small seed inside a bean. When the bean is dry, it explodes, and seeds spread away. The color of the seeds tends birds to pick the seed and they bring the seed away. This is how they spread away.

I taught this lesson to my little brother while he picking up seeds.

_{Dried bean with seeds}

If we observe closely, there are plenty of attractive things even in a little space. I found some newly germinating seeds with different stages in one place. It was useful to teach the little one about how a plant grows.

He picked up seeds as much as he could. Not only that, picked up some beans and pulled some small plants to take home. There were hundreds of young "Red Bead Plants" there. He asked me "How long it will take to grow my plant as this big tree?". I explained to him how difficult it is to become a big tree. I gave him the lesson on "needs to grow a plant".

These few minutes gave him the opportunity to have a quick environment lesson.

After picking up hundreds of red beads we turned back home. One the way he used to ask names of different trees. I helped him with names and some stories around trees.

30 minutes each day like this would fill my tiered mind with happiness!

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_{10% to SL-Charity}