To many people in the Western world, bamboo is just another exotic plant, one that’s valued more for its landscaping beauty than for the many practical uses to which it can be put. It’s different in Asia-Asians celebrate the beauty of bamboo in literature, song, and art, but they’ve also found countless diverse use for it.

  Bamboo grows like weeds in many parts of Asia, and its hollow tube-like culms or stems proved to be a very useful raw material.It was integral to the development of agriculture-and by extension,civilization-in ancient China. Waterwheels made of bamboo scooped water out of rivers and dumped it into troughs and pipes made of bamboo that irrigated the rice fields. Farmers built their homes out of bamboo, penned their animals in bamboo corrals, and fed them a diet that included bamboo leaves as fodder. The farmers themselves ate meals of bamboo shoots cooked in bamboo steamers, served on bamboo plates and eaten with bamboo chopsticks.They washed down their meals with ulanzi, a sweet wine made with fermented bamboo sap, served in bamboo cups. They used it for everything.

  It’s use has been spreading West slowly for more than a century, but now, with modern technology and because the plant is so fast growing and quickly renewable, many experts say bamboo is poised to become one of the most important plant species of the 21st century.

  So, what is bamboo?it’s a member of the Poaceae family- the grasses-which includes the grass in your lawn, along with all the grains, such as wheat, corn and rice. And several species of bamboo make up the largest members of this family. Grasses are relatively “new” plants on Earth, not having appeared until around the time of the disappearance of the dinosaurs, about 65 million years ago. And bamboo, experts say, didn’t appear until 35 million years ago. Because of grasses ability to survive in a great variety of climates, plains, marshes, and mountains- they have become one of the most successful types of plant life on Earth.

  Bamboo is found in temperature and tropical regions around the globe and is native to every continent except Antarctica and Europe.More than half of the 1,200 bamboo species are found in Asia (mostly in China) but they also exist throughout India and Southeast Asia, down to Northern Australia, all across sub-Saharan Africa and into Madagascar, and in the Americas. Like grains, which were vital to the development of civilization, bamboo spread across the globe through its close relationship to humans.

BAMBOOLIZED

Why does bamboo have so much potential for the future? Because of it’s physical qualities. It is harder than maple or oak, and has a much greater dimensional stability than either of these hardwoods (it doesn’t shrink or expand as much as wood, which explains, in part, its current popularity for flooring.) Its tensile strength-the amount of pulling force it can withstand before it breaks-is greater than steel’s, its compressive strength is comparable to concrete and its weight-to-strength ratio is greater than graphite.

  Another amazing fact about bamboo: it is the fastest growing plant on Earth. Recorded growth rates have been clocked at two inches an hour. Huge shoots can attain maximum height in less than two months. Maximum height? A World record giant bamboo was found in 2003, by researchers at Yunnan University in southwestern China. The Stem was 150 feet tall, weighed 990 llbs. and was 14 inches in diameter. The rapid growth rate has obvious

economic advantages: A bamboo plantation can be harvested without killing the plant. Most

of the plant is underground. so it will just send up shoots the following year-more and progressively bigger ones.

ECO-FACT:

Growing on otherwise unsuitable or degraded land, the dense and fibrous root system of bamboo retains moisture, prevents erosion.