Photographs of the surroundings of the bin Laden family compound in Abbottabad featuring assorted farmers, and other press reports of a vaguely botanical slant, naturally had me wondering what people grow around there. Using the location data from Google Maps in Droppr suggests that the main crops in terms of area are maize, various pulses and “other oil crops,” with small amounts of wheat and rice. Sugarcane shows quite a bit of production from a relatively small area. I was a bit surprised by the maize thing, but it seems to be borne out by an albeit somewhat dated census of agriculture for the district. Droppr does, however, seem to rather underestimate the importance of wheat. By the way, the “shaftal” mentioned as an important fodder crop during the rabi or winter season is probably Persian Clover (Trifolium resupinatum).
There are many trees shown in the various photographs but I’m afraid I can’t identify a single one. Did I perhaps see a mulberry among them? Maybe someone out there can help. Interestingly, Abbottabad was once called the City of the Maple Trees. At first I thought that couldn’t be Acer, but it seems from Wikipedia’s map of distribution of the genus that it could. There’s an interesting-looking study of the ethnobotany of the region’s trees that would probably reveal all, if I could afford it.
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