India, May 23 -- For over three decades, Rajendra Gumaste has tended to the acres of greenery in a pocket at the southern tip of Mumbai set up by scientist extraordinaire Homi Bhabha. Now, as he prepares to move on to other pastures, he leaves to it the distilled essence of his years of work there, sprinkled with archival finds and curiosities, in the form of a coffee table book titled 'Trees of Tata Institute of Fundamental Research'.

"When Dr Bhabha got this piece of land in Colaba in the 1950s to house TIFR, it was mostly barren reclaimed land," said Gumaste, speaking before the book's launch at the seaside campus on Thursday. "Even though this was to be a den of scientific inquiry, he gave as much importance to nature in over 20 acre...