Much of the driving in Bhutan is tortuous and faintly terrifying . It ’s best to pay as short aid as possible to where the car wheel are going and cark yourself with plant spotting or else . Imagine aim along a farm cut through one of the great Cornish gardens like Trebah or Glendurgan , add a few dozen switchbacks , landslides and waterfalls , deduct the tree diagram fern and palms ( which are not from these voice ) and you ’ll have a fair idea of the scenery . Then keep going for at least five hours , without a loo breakage , until your bottom goes numb . That sums up road travelling Bhutan style .
The road from the capital Thimphu towards the E of Bhutan cut across the first of nine or ten mountain passing at Dochu La. At 3140 m it ’s not the highest , but enough to make unfit people like myself puff and gasp at the tenuous exertion . Winding quickly through blue pine forests the melodic line cools observably , although in the sunshine it still find like a warm May sidereal day . Around Hongtsho , the checkpoint for all travelling due east , every roadside coin bank and cool valley is carpet with purple drumstick , the peak ofPrimula denticulata(below ) . They run riot , just like our vulgar primrose , Primula vulgaris . A week subsequently , when we return this style the denticulatas are over , supercede by diminutivePrimula gracilipes , Bhutan ’s most common primula .
Scenting the aura everywhere in Bhutan at this fourth dimension of class isDaphne bholua . Its peanut white-hot or pallid - pinkish flowers are really tricky to photograph as they seem seldom to be unblemished , but it ’s the endearing scent that count . The barque of daphne is used to make traditional Bhutanese penning paper . It ’s termite proof and therefore employed for the committal to writing of precious religious scripture .
Towards the summit , bright specks of cerise , pink and cream begin to appear in the thickening evergreen woods , which is mainly made up of oak tree ( Quercus glauca , Q. lamellosaandQ. oxyodon ) plus motley pines and spruces , but notably towering hemlocks ( Tsuga dumosa ) . The particle of heyday belong to rhododendronsarboreumandfalconeriwhich attain tree - like proportion in these mellow , undisturbed forests . One hebdomad after those specs have developed into a drunken revelry of colour , as far as the center can see .
High in the forest canopy , the flowers ofMagnolia campbelliiappear like flocks of white fowl against the downhearted sky . This is the only specie of magnolia we ’ve encounter in the wild , although more on it ’s as striking congeneric , Michelia doltsopa , in a later post .
decently at the top of the pass a collection of 108 chortens ( below ) have been constructed to immortalise those who die in a recent conflict with militant from Assam . The number 108 is deeply auspicious in Bhutan and does n’t represent the phone number of those who perished . On the slopes face-to-face , hundred of prayer flags lease their messages vaporize in the picnic as the sun shaft of light slant through the tree . Alas , despite the sunlight , weather weather condition at this time of class mean that a fog obscures the view of the high Himalayas to the magnetic north .
Every pass in Bhutan part the same kind of primeval feeling , the strain so light that lichens encrust trunks and hang from every bough . This is where some of the tallest and older tree develop , many of the venerable poison hemlock without their tops , but fighting on . Some of these trees are proven to be over 700 years honest-to-god . It ’s hard to discover in watchword the loftiness of these humid , mainly evergreen plant forests but it ’s meet that they ’re keep now as a Royal Botanical Park . Once over the passing travellers descend through the Lampelri forest towards the Royal Botanical Gardens . Anyone expecting Kew would be disappointed – the gardens are , to put it courteously , in their plastic stage . However there ’s a decent and well labelled accumulation of rhododendron , include deep redRhododenron thomsonii . This is an idealistic shrub for smaller garden with acid soils .
On our travels I ’ve soon realize that far from being homogenous , the timberland of Bhutan are a serial of complex habitats , some industrial plant appearing in quantity in certain places , never to be seen anywhere else . This seems to be specially true for many rhododendron , which seem to be picky about both prospect and elevation . For example the beautiful magentaRhododendron kesangiae(below ) appear in very modest group , usually just below the high-pitched liberty chit at 3000m . Rhododendron falconeriseems to prefer conditions a piddling low down the slopes , but unhorse up the forest with its emollient flower school principal . The celebrated exception isRhododendron arboreum , Bhutan ’s anwer to the dreadedRhododenrdon ponticum . A highly variable species , the bloom vary in semblance from hemangioma simplex red to cerise pink . It will grow on drop-off and compressed ground , in shade and in broad daytime . It ’s really not that fussed .
Rhododendron kesangiae
Rhododendron falconeri
When you ’ve had enough of all those lipstick colours , convey a dash of bright lily-livered to the canvas isPiptanthus nepalensis , or evergreen genus Laburnum . Piptanthus make a tall , open bush and with its silvery leave look more Mediterranean than Himalayan . deal not fully audacious in the UK , I ’d say that establish good drainage it should do pretty well in a lovesome place , perhaps losing its leaves in the winter but reclaim again in spring .
In my next post , The Valley of the Black Cranes – Gangtey and the Phobjikha Valley . And if we thought the roads over Dochu La were bad , we had another thing coming !
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family : alpines , Flowers , Travel , Trees and Shrubs
Posted by The Frustrated Gardener
