The contest’s hotting up! Today we announce the Nature India photo contest 2016 finalist number seven:
Aditya Kanwal, Mohali, Punjab, India.
Photo caption: ‘Human flower’
{credit}Aditya Kanwal{/credit}
Aditya, a PhD scholar in the Biological Sciences Department of IISER Mohali, says:
Aditya Kanwal
“This is a macro shot of the ‘Tropaeolum majus’ flower with an unmissable human like contour (complete with a heart and blood vessels, if you look closely). The flower, commonly known as the Indian cress, grows on a small plant originating from the Andes and now used around the world as an ornamental plant.
More importantly, it has long been used as herbal medicine in combination with other herbs to treat ailments such as bronchitis, urinary tract infections, swollen airways and cough. Ayurveda or the Indian system of medicine uses such plants since ancient times to cure a wide array of disorders. With time, a lot of these traditional systems have been forgotten. We need to preserve such traditional knowledge, where humans were one with Nature (as this picture symbolises), and keep them alive for our future generations.”
Congratulations Aditya, for being in the top ten!
As the contest comes close to its finale, the Nature India editorial and design team is having a tough time selecting just three winners, who stand a chance of seeing their entries grace the cover page of one of our forthcoming print publications. The winner and two runners-up will receive a copy of the just released Nature India Special Annual Volume and a bag of goodies from Springer Nature.
As a run up to the final announcement, we are rolling out the top 10 finalists of the photo competition (in no particular order of merit) on the Indigenus blog as well as our social media platforms (Twitter and Facebook). The final results will be announced in late December 2016.
Nature India’s final decision to chose the winner will be partly influenced by the engagement and reception he/she receives here at the Indigenus blog, on Twitter and on Facebook. To give all finalists a fair chance, we will take into consideration the social media engagement of each picture only during the first seven days of its announcement.
So watch out for our other finalists and feel free to promote, share and like your favourite entries with the hashtag #NatureIndphoto.