Some bamboo shoots out almost a metre in a single day
Bamboo is a grass, yet its giants reach 46 metres and weigh up to 450 kilograms. Certain species add 91 centimetres in a day, about a millimetre every 90 seconds. Stranger still, many flower only once every 65 or 120 years, all at the same moment, and then die.
Bamboos form the subfamily Bambusoideae within the grass family. The largest, Dendrocalamus sinicus, grows culms up to 46 metres long and 36 centimetres across. Like other grasses, their stems are usually hollow between the joints, with vascular bundles scattered through the walls rather than arranged in a ring. With no true wood and no secondary thickening, big bamboos grow as straight columns instead of tapering like tree trunks.
Speed is the headline feature. Growth depends on an underground rhizome network, and Japanese giant timber bamboo has been clocked at 120 centimetres in 24 hours, though 30 to 100 millimetres a day is more typical for cultivated temperate species. Unlike any tree, each culm breaks the soil at its final diameter and reaches full height in one season of three to four months, only then sprouting branches. Clumping types spread slowly on short rhizomes, while running types need firm control.
The flowering habit is famously odd. Many species bloom rarely and unpredictably, sometimes at intervals of 65 or 120 years, with whole populations flowering together. After flowering a plant declines and often dies. Hardiness varies: many tropical species perish near freezing, while some temperate ones survive minus 29 degrees Celsius.
Bamboo grows naturally from Sakhalin at 50 degrees north to northern Australia and west to the Himalayas, with smaller footholds in Africa and the Americas. The Southeastern United States has three native species, and its once-dominant canebrake thickets are now critically endangered. Across South, Southeast and East Asia bamboo serves as food, building material and artistic subject. Its strength-to-weight ratio rivals timber, and Bambusa tulda has tested at 400 megapascals in tension. Fast growth on poor land also makes it a candidate for reforestation and carbon capture.
Source: Bamboo
