India, Nov. 15 -- Saalumarada Thimmakka, whose decades of patient tree planting turned her into one of India's most admired environmental figures, died on Friday at a private hospital in Bengaluru. She was 114. Her family said she had been unwell for some time and had been receiving treatment when she passed away.

Thimmakka was born on 30 June, 1911, in Gubbi taluk in Tumakuru district. With no formal schooling and unable to have children, she began planting saplings as a way to fill an emotional void. Over the years, she cared for the young trees with the tenderness she said she would have given her own children.

Her commitment eventually reshaped a stretch of rural Karnataka.

She became widely known as Saalumarada, meaning row of tre...