From cup-sized wonders to towering blooms: Meet Kerala’s Lotus man

KOCHI: From a tiny lotus that grows in a two-inch cup to a thousand-petalled variety bearing 600 to more than 1,000 petals, a lotus named Vasuki with petals resembling a cobra’s hood, and Akhila, whose flowers rise to a height of eight feet, Ganesh Kumar of Perumpilly in Mulanthuruthy, Ernakulam, has developed 25 new lotus varieties with different colours, fragrances and sizes. He created these varieties over eight years through cross-breeding, starting with seeds of rare lotus varieties.

The contributions of 42-year-old Ganesh were recently featured in an article published by the Royal Horticultural Society in Britain. He is also the first Indian to have a lotus variety registered with the International Lotus Registry in the United States.

Ganesh moved to Tripura at the age of 24 to work for the Rubber Board. When he returned to Kerala after 10 years, he brought with him a wealth of knowledge about lotus varieties. His experiments gradually yielded rare varieties of the flower. He even named one of them after his mother, Alamelu.

Ganesh, who holds a postgraduate degree in Environmental Science, pursued his interest in lotuses to the point of connecting with Dr. Dai Kattian, a researcher at the Shanghai Institute of Biological Sciences in China. Accepting the researcher’s invitation, Ganesh travelled to China, where he became acquainted with varieties including the thousand-petalled lotus. China has more than 2,500 lotus varieties.
He set up an experimental garden in his home compound in collaboration with his friend, V. R. Abhilash.