Phuentsho ..

National Biodiversity Centre, Bhutan · National Herbarium

We report here Tetrastigma planicaule (Hook.f.) Gagnep. of the Vitaceae family as a new species record in Bhutan. It is sighted inside the Tongling Kuenphen Community Forest, Gangzur Gewog in the Lhuentse district. It is an economically important plant that has medicinal properties in traditional Chinese medicine. From our field observations,...

Montane bamboo is of very importance to the indigenous people inhabiting mountains of the Himalayas, and is a necessary component of high-altitude temperate forest ecosystems. Particularly, in Laya it is commonly used for weaving conical hat and other implements. Thamnocalamus spathiflorus (Trin.) Munro bamboo was documented as a main element of th...

Montane bamboo is of very importance to the indigenous people inhabiting mountains of the Himalayas, and is a necessary component of high-altitude temperate forest ecosystems. Particularly, in Laya it is commonly used for weaving conical hat and other implements. Thamnocalamus spathiflorus (Trin.) Munro bamboo was documented as a main element of th...

The seven sections of the genus Arisaema found in Bhutan are described based on the morphological evidences of 16 species of Arisaema known from the Bhutan Himalaya: sect. Anomala Gusman & L. Gusman, sect. Arisaema, sect. Dochafa (Schott) H. Hara, sect. Nepenthoidea (Engler) H. Hara, sect. Sinarisaema Nakai and sect. Tenuipistillata Engler, sect. T...

Presence of the large shrubby plant called Ipomoea campanulata is reported for the first time in Bhu-tan. It was found during an invasive alien plant survey conducted in the Jomotsangkha Wildlife Sanctuary in February 2020. Specimens were collected from the Deorali roadside between Phuntshothang and Samrang in Samdrup Jongkhar district. A brief dia...

Plant hunting these days is much more than randomly finding plants in the wild. We can arm-chair travel, covet wild plants shown in forum images, and discuss their identity. Phuentsho had recognized images posted on Facebook and in the citizen science web portals iNaturalist.org and biodiversity.bt as the same plants he had seen multiple times arou...

During a recent field trip in Wangdue Dzongkhag, few medium sized flowering trees were observed by roadside along Dangchhu river valley near Chuzomsa, and additionally from Phochhu in Puna-kha. The species was identified as Rhaphiolepis bengalensis (Roxb.) B.B.Liu & J.Wen, which is a new record of plant to Bhutan. Formerly, the species was known as...

New herpetofauna record from the kingdom of Bhutan obtained through citizen science

A total of 48 new records of species previously unrecorded in Bhutan (comprising 22 amphibians, one turtle, 10 lizards, and 15 snakes) are reported here.

A team consisting of two foresters from Jigme Singye Wangchuck National Park(JSWNP) and two from the National Herbarium of the National Biodiversity Centre conducted a field excursion in the areas within the jurisdiction of Langthel, Nabji and Tingtibi range offices under the JSWNP. The team tried to explore the areas where little or no plant colle...

Amblyanthopsis bhotanica (C. B. Clarke) Mez (Primulaceae, though formerly placed in Myrsinaceae) is one of four species in this genus of Asiatic evergreen shrubs, which are found in India, Bhutan and the Philippines. In the Flora of Bhutan (Long & Rae 1999) it was treated in the closely-related genus Ardisia along with six other species. Both ge...

Bhutan is a very significant biodiverse country in the Eastern Himalayas (Myers et al. 2000). It is located within the Oriental Zoogeographic Realm, the Central Asian Flyway, shares the Palearctic and Indo-Malayan Zoogeographic Realms and forms a part of the Eastern Himalayan Biodiversity Hotspot. Owing to the global significance of her biodiver...