A village’s name on millions of lips
Dashehari leads back to a village near Lucknow and the mother tree its community remembers.
Dashehari — Dashehari village, near Kakori, Lucknow district, Uttar Pradesh
Local tradition
The name comes from Dashehari village. A field account compiled by biodiversity researcher Bhuwon Sthapit with CISH scientists and local farmers describes its celebrated mother tree and the community around it. CISH collected scion material there in 1977 to propagate selected trees through nurseries.
The account also preserves a local legend: a travelling mango trader quarrelled with a monk who offered shelter, pushed a prized fruit into the earth, and left. The monk cared for the seedling that followed; its fine fruit eventually attracted the landowning nawab’s attention. This is the remembered tale, not a verified planting record.
The tree, the grafts and the story are different ways of keeping an inheritance alive. Dashehari names a mango, but it also keeps the village from disappearing behind the fruit’s fame.
The names it answers to
- Dashehari / Dasheri
- Spellings of the cultivar named for Dashehari village.
- Malihabad Dusseheri
- The regional name recorded in the geographical-indication account.