Vietnam: Strips of bamboo shoots drying in the sun, Ban Don village, Dak Lak Province, Central Highlands. Even in the late twentieth century, the uses of bamboo remain immensely diverse. The seeds are eaten as grain, and the cooked young shoots of some species are eaten as vegetables, especially in East Asian cuisines. The raw leaves are used as fodder for livestock. The pulped fibre of several bamboo species are used to make high quality paper. A fine-grained silica known as tabasheer, produced from the joints of bamboo stems, has been used as a medicine in the orient for centuries.