Tropical Plains

The plains of the south and southwest resemble those across the border in Myanmar, Laos and Vietnam. Rather than the elevated plateaux common to the rest of Yunnan, the land consists of broad alluvial plains broken by small hill ranges. Bamboo and palm are the dominant indigenous trees, though large swaths of the highlands are covered by rubber tree plantations. Extensive virgin rain forests are still preserved here, such as the 35 km stretch between Jinuoshan and Menglun in central Xishuangbanna. Most of the trees are tropical evergreens, as well as deciduous hardwoods whose leaves drop in spring, the dry season. Thus the tropical forests , except for the woods near the peaks of the highest mountains, do not display the red, yellow, orange, maroon and purple colours that run riot in so many northern forests every autumn.

Yunnan's lush tropical forests are home to a great variety of jungle flowers, plants and epiphytes. Strangler figs begin as epiphytes-plants that grow in a trough created by a big tree's twisting branches. Seeds are left there in birds' dung. Eventually the plant starts living off its host, spreading its own growth across the branches and trunk and sending its own roots down to the ground below. Finally the parasite tree takes over completely and outgrows the original tree.

Banyans are another species which look like their lower branches are being supported by subsidiary trunks. These are roots, though, not trunks. A few banyans standing together can look like a dense grove. One such group is a major tourist attraction on the Wanding-Ruili road in Dehong. Occasionally the twisted trunk and branches appear to assume a new and recognisable shape, like Mengyang's Elephant Tree. Or it has so many thick aboveground roots the single tree resembles a forest, like the one at Daluo, near the Myanmar border in Xishuangbanna.

The south and southwest are blessed with an abundance of water. Not only is the land watered by several rivers and innumerable creeks and streams that begin as gushes from springs high in the surrounding mountains. The area also receives more rain than the rest of the province, being the first part of Yunnan to get the monsoon and the last part to see it leave. Irrigation is widespread and most farms are in steady use, producing more than one crop per year. Throughout the year rich green is the dominant colour of the plains, interspersed with harvest yellow.