Class 8 English Poorvi Unit 4, Environment, celebrates our bond with nature and conservation, opening with Ruskin Bond’s classic story The Cherry Tree set in the Himalayan foothills of Mussoorie.
What Class 8 English Unit 4 Covers
The Cherry Tree follows six-year-old Rakesh and his grandfather in Mussoorie as Rakesh plants a single Kashmir cherry seed and watches the sapling survive monsoon rains, a browsing goat and a grass-cutter’s scythe before blossoming into a tree.
Poem, Companion Reading, and Determiners connect nature and conservation (including Project Tiger and agricultural biodiversity) with grammar practice on determiners and writing a school-magazine article.
Trees and the people who saved wildlife: the main story is Ruskin Bond’s The Cherry Tree, in which Rakesh plants a cherry seed that grows into a tree. The unit notes that the banyan is India’s National Tree and lists famous old banyans such as the Great Banyan in Shibpur, Howrah, and Dodda Aalada Mara in Karnataka, one of which was listed in the Guinness Book of World Records in 1989. It also introduces Kailash Sankhala, ‘the Tiger Man of India’, who carried out a tiger census in 1971. The grammar covers punctuation and capital letters.
Exercises in Unit 4
- Let us discuss and Let us think and reflect comprehension and extract-based questions.
- Let us learn (vocabulary & grammar), Let us listen, Let us speak, Let us write and Let us explore.
Read Class 8 English Unit 4 Online
More Chapters
- Previous: Unit 3: Mystery and Magic
- Next: Unit 5: Science and Curiosity
- All English chapters and the other Class 8 books: Class 8 NCERT books 2026-27
- All Class 1 to 12 NCERT Textbooks: NCERT Books PDF (Class 1–12)
FAQ
Why did Rakesh’s grandfather tell him to plant the cherry seed?
Grandfather told Rakesh that nothing is lucky if you merely put it away—if you want luck, you must put it to some use by planting it.
What challenges did the cherry tree survive in Unit 4?
A goat eating its leaves, a woman cutting grass slicing it in two with a scythe, and heavy monsoon and winter weather.
Who wrote The Cherry Tree?
Ruskin Bond.