A nourishing river, like the Nile or, in ancient times, the Euphrates and Tigris, the Indus is a miracle. A miracle of life and prosperity – think of the formidable Indus civilisation that emerged four millennia ago in what is now Pakistan and India, while much of the rest of the world was just discovering agriculture and beginning to organise into complex societies. This miracle allowed this civilisation, a highly advanced one for its time, to survive for nearly two millennia by providing water in a harsh climate: temperatures can reach 50°C in some places in summer and monsoon rains are scarce, when they are not torrential and devastating.

It is also a miracle of beauty: those who have seen the banks of the Indus, Alexander the Great for example, can testify to the striking beauty of the spectacle of a powerful river. Indeed, the Indus is fuelled every spring by melting snow and ice and then by the monsoon in summer, flowing in the shadow of the highest peaks in the world, in a landscape that is sometimes cold and arid, then abundantly watered and warm, and finally harshly hot and arid. The river originates in Tibet, under Chinese control, passes through India, in the cold, high-altitude desert of Ladakh, and then continues its journey towards the Karakoram in Pakistan, under the gaze of the region's four 8,000-metre peaks, nicknamed the ‘Third Pole’ because it is covered in ice. Once past these high mountains, the river enters another world, greener, wetter and more vegetated, dominated by the monsoon before reaching the great fertile valley that bears its name.

One cannot talk about the Indus without mentioning Punjab, a hydrological name if ever there was one, coming from the Persian (پنج, Panj, ‘five’ and آب, ab, ‘water’), evoking the five rivers that converge in this land with its intense history of warfare and agriculture, making it one of the beating hearts of the Indian world, nestled in the hollow of the tree's branches.

Now a maze of canals designed by the British, the great Indus river tree is also severely disrupted by the numerous reservoirs and dams used to generate energy, not to mention the melting glaciers from which the Indus draws its vital flow. So here we are, looking at a tree that needs to be kept under close observation: its inhabitants are facing increasing danger, with heat waves becoming more intense every year, glaciers melting and powerful monsoons causing terrible floods.

So, which tree best represents the Indus? The juniper seems ideal: prized for the incense used in various mountain rituals and imbued with spirituality, it is robust, drought-resistant and grows at high altitudes, isolated, like the Indus: a relatively isolated tree-river taking a strange silhouette, shaped by the harsh climate of mountains

The Indus juniper, Juniperus Indus