Last updated: September 2026 · Method: guidance built from our Khejarli research and documented desert ecology. A species guide.
The khejri tree is the Thar’s keystone — the tree that feeds people (sangri pods, see the ker sangri guide), feeds animals (leaves and pods), shades the fields, fixes nitrogen into desert soil, and survives on almost no water. The Bishnoi protect it as sacred; the state declares it the state tree; and every dish of the desert carries its signature. A guide to the most important tree in Marwar.
The tree
Prosopis cineraria; deep-rooted (the taproots reach the water tables other plants can’t), evergreen-ish, and the reason cultivation works at the desert’s edge. Its pods (sangri) are harvested and dried for the classic curry; its leaves feed the livestock; its shade shelters the fields. The Khejarli story; 363 lives given for these trees, is its cultural weight.
Where to see them
Everywhere in the rural Thar around Jodhpur, the Bishnoi villages hold the grandest old specimens (protected by the community for centuries), and the highway edges carry the wind-shaped elders. The pods appear in the spice markets dried.
Questions worth asking
Why do farmers leave khejri in their fields?
Agroforestry before the word: the tree fixes nitrogen, drops fodder, shades crops and doesn’t steal their water at surface level. Cutting it was always the worse economics, the Bishnoi just priced in the sacred.
Related guides
Have a favourite khejri, a giant, a shape, a story? Send the tree and the place.
