Goa’s Matti Trees Are Nature’s Answer To A Warming Planet
By Manu Shrivastava
The first thing I noticed while travelling through Ponda and the interiors of South Goa was not merely the lushness of the landscape, but the commanding presence of the Matti tree. Towering above roadsides, temple pathways, and agrarian settlements, these giant trees seemed to hold entire ecosystems beneath their expansive canopies. As Special Projects Editor of The Draft and as someone deeply invested in environmental transitions across India, I had arrived in Goa expecting to study the region’s changing climate patterns. Instead, I found myself repeatedly drawn toward these remarkable natural sentinels that local communities had quietly protected for generations.
The Matti tree, scientifically known as Terminalia tomentosa, belongs to the Combretaceae family, is native to large parts of the Indian subcontinent, and is known for its unique bark that resembles crocodile skin. Unlike the African baobab, which stores water in its swollen trunk, the Matti tree contributes to ecological balance through a different form of environmental resilience. Its dense canopy creates substantial cooling zones in tropical regions, its root systems help retain soil stability, and its leaf cover improves moisture retention across surrounding landscapes.
 |
| The Matti tree is known for its bark that resembles crocodile skin |
What fascinated me most during my journey through Goa was how deeply these trees remain embedded within local environmental memory. Villagers across Ponda and South Goa spoke about how areas lined with mature Matti trees remained noticeably cooler during the peak of summer. Farmers described how the earth around these trees resisted rapid drying even during prolonged heat. Birds nested abundantly around them, and countless smaller organisms thrived in their shade. Modern environmental science now confirms what traditional communities intuitively understood long ago - large indigenous trees create microclimates capable of reducing localised heat stress.
During the talks I held in Goa on ecological sustainability and climate resilience, I repeatedly stressed that the future of environmental protection in India cannot rely solely on technological interventions. Urban cooling systems, artificial green corridors, and climate adaptation policies are important, but they often overlook the role of mature native trees in regulating temperature naturally. A fully grown Matti tree performs environmental labour that no decorative urban plantation can replicate within decades. Its broad canopy absorbs solar radiation, lowers surrounding surface temperatures, supports biodiversity, and contributes significantly to carbon sequestration.
While studying these majestic trees in Goa, I found myself recalling another extraordinary experience from the Konkan coast near Murud, where I had earlier encountered ancient baobab trees. Unlike the Matti tree, the baobab belongs to the genus Adansonia within the Malvaceae family and is globally celebrated for its immense water-storing capacity. In arid and semi-arid landscapes across Africa, baobabs have historically functioned almost like natural reservoirs. Their swollen trunks can store massive quantities of water, allowing them to survive extreme drought conditions for centuries.
Earlier, while travelling through parts of the Andaman archipelago, I encountered similar giant tropical species adapted to coastal stress, saline winds, and increasingly erratic weather systems. Though taxonomically distinct from both the Matti and the baobab, these resilient tropical giants revealed a common environmental truth, that the world’s oldest and largest trees often evolve precisely where climatic survival becomes difficult. That realisation stayed with me throughout my journey in Goa.
The climate crisis is forcing humanity to confront a dangerous paradox. We continue building cities that intensify heat while simultaneously destroying the very ecological systems capable of reducing it. Across India, mature trees are routinely felled for highways, commercial expansion, and urban infrastructure. In their place come ornamental saplings incapable of providing meaningful thermal regulation for decades. The ecological loss is immeasurable. A mature Matti tree does not merely offer shade. It stabilises entire environmental relationships involving soil, moisture, insects, birds, fungi, and atmospheric cooling.
Scientific studies worldwide increasingly warn about the rapid rise of urban heat islands. Concrete absorbs and traps heat. Asphalt radiates thermal energy long after sunset. Air-conditioners worsen external temperatures by expelling hot air into already stressed urban atmospheres. In tropical countries like India, where wet-bulb temperatures are steadily rising, the preservation of mature tree systems may soon become a matter of public survival rather than environmental idealism.
What Goa demonstrated to me was that traditional communities often preserve climate wisdom more effectively than modern planning institutions. The Matti tree survives in many parts of Goa because local populations respected it long before environmental discourse became fashionable. Sacred groves, temple compounds, agrarian boundaries, and community memory together protected these trees through generations of social continuity. That relationship between culture and ecology may hold the key to climate adaptation in the decades ahead.
The baobabs of Murud taught me about endurance in drought-prone landscapes. The resilient tropical giants of the Andamans revealed survival against cyclonic and coastal extremes. But the Matti trees of Goa offered something equally profound - a reminder that India’s indigenous ecological systems already possess remarkable mechanisms for thermal balance and environmental resilience.
As I stood beneath one of these towering Matti trees in South Goa during the harsh afternoon heat, the temperature difference beneath its canopy felt immediate and almost startling. The air softened and the ground held moisture. Birds moved through the branches in restless rhythm while sunlight fractured gently through layers of leaves. At that moment, it became impossible not to recognise a simple truth.
The climate crisis will not be solved only in laboratories, summit halls, or policy papers. Part of the solution already stands quietly beside our roads, villages, forests, and temples in the form of ancient trees we have not yet fully learned to value.
