Founder’s Briefs: An occasional series where Mongabay founder Rhett Ayers Butler shares analysis, perspectives and story summaries.

In Reddipalli, a village tucked into the dry red soils of Khammam district in India’s Telangana state, there lived a man who measured life not in years or wealth, but in saplings. By his own modest estimate, Daripalli Ramaiah planted more than 10 million trees. For more than six decades he traveled — on foot, later by bicycle, and sometimes on a battered scooter — scattering seeds in every barren corner he could find. His companions were pockets full of seeds, his cargo the hope of shade, fruit and shelter for generations he would never meet. He died on April 12, aged 87.

To most, he was not “Daripalli Ramaiah” but “Vanajeevi,” the forest dweller, or simply “Chettu Ramaiah,” the tree man. His eccentric appearance — a green placard draped like a shawl reading Vriksho Rakshati Rakshitaha (“Protect trees, and they will protect you”) — made him an object of ridicule in earlier years. Children chased his bicycle, adults dismissed him as a crank. Yet Ramaiah, undeterred, pedaled on. A devout believer in nature as a deity, he once said: “I do not believe in people who cut trees but prostrate before a stone. For me, Nature is God, and God is Nature.”

Born in 1937, he never advanced beyond 10th grade in school. But his education never truly ceased. He read everything he could about trees, memorized their uses, cultivated their lore, and preserved news clippings on afforestation like sacred texts. His home, a modest two-bedroom structure, became a shrine to greenery, its walls festooned with environmental slogans. When his mission outpaced his means, he sold his 1.2 hectares (3 acres) of land to buy seeds and saplings. He named his granddaughters after trees.

Recognition, when it came, was not what he sought, but it was richly deserved. In 2017, the Indian government awarded him the Padma Shri, one of the country’s highest civilian honors. He received honorary degrees, accolades from political leaders, and was even included in school curricula. But his true legacy was wordless: forests rising where there had been none.

If most live as though nature is infinite, Ramaiah lived as if every tree were his last act of penance. He did not just plant trees: he planted the idea that one life, lived with purpose, could shade a nation.

And perhaps it will.

Banner image of Daripalli Ramaiah courtesy of Ministry of Jal Shakti, India.