Page 44 - BHUTAN 2007

Actually, the farmlands extend into the major cities we saw as well. Every
acre of arable land is used, usually for rice production. Since there is a

limited amount of land that can be effectively productive, none of it is

wasted, no matter if it is right alongside the airport runway in Paro or on

empty lots in the capital city, Thimphu. Red rice and sticky rice are the

staple food of the Bhutanese, so it consumes the most land.

Many of the flowers were familiar to us and that was another surprising
discovery. So we saw lots of marigolds, bougainvillea, periwinkles, trumpet

vines, hibiscus, pansies, petunias, zinnias, and rhododendrons. Fruits were

also mostly familiar to us: guavas, apples, bananas, persimmons, oranges,

and pomegranates. The national tree is the cypress but it did not resemble

our bald cypresses at all. Magnolias are also a ubiquitous tree, but again,
they did not look like our southern magnolia in any way.

The primeval, virgin forests that carpet all the foothills and mountains

forming the valleys are so dense and uniform in height that there are just

the little bumps here and there so that the whole resembles nothing so

much as broccoli heads and flowers. There are some differences in the types

of forests depending on elevations and soils. Some forests are almost

tropical, looking like Amazonian rain forest trees. Others are reminiscent of
US southern forests with a grandfather’s beard, a moss-like growth,

dangling from the branches. Still others are filled with cedars and other

boreal type trees.