Bamboo, a renewable resource, is the fastest growing plant in the world - growing as fast as 47.6 inches in a 24-hour period.
Bamboo can be selectively harvested every year after 7 years, compared to 30 to 50 years for trees, and bamboo regenerates without replanting. With a 10-30% annual increase in biomass versus 2-5% for trees, bamboo can yield 20 times more timber than trees on the same area.
Bamboos include over 1000 species of woody, perennial grasses in more than 100 genera all over the planet that are native to every continent except Europe and the poles. China has an abundant resource of bamboo - over 400 species. For 3000 years, the Chinese have been making bamboo products.
Bamboo tolerates extremes of drought and drowning, generates 30% more oxygen than trees and is considered a critical element in the balance between oxygen and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Because of its wide spread root system and large canopy, bamboo greatly reduces rain run off and prevents massive soil erosion.
Bamboo helps mitigate water pollution due to its high nitrogen consumption, making it a solution for excess nutrient uptake of waste water from manufacturing, livestock farming and sewage treatment.
Bamboo is one of the strongest building materials on earth. Because of its great tensile strength, its capacity for splitting straight, its hardness, its peculiar cross-section, and the ease with which it can be grown (a combination of useful traits found together in no other plant) bamboo is one of those providential developments in nature which, like the horse, the cow, wheat and cotton, have been indirectly responsible for man's own evolution.
Uses of Bamboo:
Shelter, food, paper, furniture, textiles, pens, sandals, lamps, chopsticks, mats, baskets, shades, wall paneling, tiles, flooring, skyscaper scaffolding, phonograph needles, slide rules, airplane skins, diesel fuels, medicines for asthma, eyewashes, aphrodisiacs, umbrellas, musical instruments, wine storage, light-bulb filaments, fans, fishing poles, ladders and the list goes on...
Bamboo info:
American Bamboo
Bamboo Arts + Crafts Network
Bamboo Central
Bamboo Garden
Bamboo of the Americas
About our bamboo species:
Moso
Bamboos, growing thick, standing single - put all your roots together and all is well in the mountains and the rivers. - Sengai, 19th century Japanese Zen Master |
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| Image: istockphoto.com/Steve Dibblee | |
