Bamboo

Bamboo is an ancient woody grass, with more than 1,600 species spread through tropical, subtropical and mild temperate zones. It occurs natively on every continent except Antarctica and Europe, though many species thrive in European gardens.

Bamboo holds the record for the fastest growth of any plant, with species adding up to 91 cm in a single day. At the peak of the season mature giant bamboo can grow up to 30 cm in a day, a rate that lets it outcompete neighbouring trees for light. This vigour is sustained by an underground economy: fallen leaves are rich in silica, which the plants reuse to boost the strength and stability of their canes. Such hardy plants are not usually bothered by pests and diseases.

The giant bamboo of Southeast Asia is among the tallest grasses on Earth and can reach 25 metres. Its lance-shaped leaves grow about 23 cm long and 3 cm wide and cluster on branches at the nodes. A giant bamboo clump typically lives 50 to 60 years without flowering, then blooms in its final years and dies. Because it regrows from its roots after harvesting, the plant is being studied as a potential carbon store as well as a material crop.

Bamboos prefer moist, fertile, free-draining ground but will tolerate most soil types as long as the roots never stay waterlogged.

Gardeners sort bamboos into two broad habits. Running bamboos push out long rhizomes, creeping underground stems that send up roots, leaves and fresh canes along their length, and the group includes Arundinaria, Phyllostachys, Pleioblastus, Pseudosasa and Sasa. Clump-forming kinds such as Bambusa, Chusquea, Fargesia, Shibataea and Thamnocalamus remain comparatively well behaved.

A running bamboo can be held in check behind a vertical barrier set into a trench at least 60 cm deep that encircles the planting. Where space is short, smaller bamboos grow well in containers at least 45 cm across, though they need repotting or division every few years.

Bambusa bambos is accepted in Plants of the World Online, the World Checklist database maintained by the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew. It is native to the Indian Subcontinent and Indo-China and grows primarily in the wet tropical biome, with a native range taking in Assam, Bangladesh, Cambodia, India, Laos, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Vietnam and the West Himalaya.

Unlike other sympodial bamboos it runs long rhizomes, so its culms stand spaced apart instead of in tight clusters.

When the species flowered in northeast India in 1959 the rats that followed sparked a famine that killed thousands of people. The once-in-a-generation flowering last occurred in 2004 and gave scientists their first chance to study a phenomenon previously known only from anecdotes.

A letter sent to Kew in 1898 by the Hong Kong medical officer John Mitford Atkinson tied bamboo flowering to a Chinese proverb of pestilence or famine. Even with a famine combat scheme running since 2004 the rodent population exploded from thousands to millions within four months.

Melocanna baccifera is monocarpic, flowering gregariously once in a cycle that runs from 40 to 50 years and then dying; it flowers at the same time across vast areas once every 44 to 48 years and dies soon after fruiting.

The flowering wave of 2004 to 2009 spread over 1.76 million hectares of northeast India and ended with the death of about 26 million tonnes of bamboo culms; the mass die-off that follows leaves soil bare and prone to erosion before the next generation can establish itself. Clumps grown far from their homeland still flowered in synchrony with wild populations after 13 to 21 years of vegetative growth.

All the bamboo plants of one species in an area flower and die together, so good panda habitat must hold several different bamboo varieties. Chemical analysis of the fruit showed only low levels of protein, overturning the popular belief that protein-rich seeds drew the rats.

The accompanying mautam caused crop losses of 38,247 metric tonnes of paddy across 659 villages.

In Mizoram forests of Melocanna baccifera covering over 26,000 square kilometres flower together about every 50 years, and the rats that follow destroy the crops.

Mizoram's bamboo groves began flowering again in November 2007 on a cycle of 48 to 49 years that made the mautam predictable in advance.

The conflict rooted in the 1959 famine ended with the 1986 peace accord, and Mizoram gained statehood the following year. Findings from a long-running thirteen-year study of Melocanna baccifera showed that sugars rather than proteins drive rat predation on the fruit.

Bamboo makes up about 99 per cent of the giant panda's diet, though the bears also eat grasses, bulbs, fruits and occasional small animals. A panda grips bamboo stalks with five digits plus an enlarged wrist bone known as a pseudo-thumb, which works almost like a real thumb. Giant pandas live in damp, misty mountain forests of southwestern China, mostly between 1,200 and 3,500 metres above sea level.

In 2016 the giant panda was downlisted from endangered to vulnerable after decades of conservation work. China's Natural Forest Conservation Program of 1998 put the remaining forests across the panda's range under protection, sheltering roughly 2.3 million hectares in all.

Bamboo supplies millions of households with employment and building material and could help answer the global shortage of conventional construction materials. A manual for designing bamboo structures to ISO 22156:2021 keeps both the standard and the guidance to two storeys because of fire concerns. INBAR helped develop two international standards for bamboo design and testing and backed national building standards in Ecuador and Peru.

After Guadua bamboo buildings came through a magnitude 6.2 earthquake in Colombia in 1999, the species was written into the country's national seismic-resistant building code.

Before the invention of paper, strips of bamboo were used as a writing material and to make books. Bamboo shoots are edible and appear in traditional Japanese, Chinese and Indonesian cooking. Potted plants of Buddha belly bamboo shrink to a compact, swollen-jointed form caused by root restriction and lean growing conditions.

INBAR was founded in 1997 to consolidate and support research on bamboo and rattan as sustainable resources. It counts 52 member states and runs regional offices in Cameroon, Ecuador, Ethiopia, Ghana and India alongside its headquarters in China. Its work covers raising standards, safe bamboo construction, restoring degraded land and green policy advice for its members.

Kew worked with INBAR to publish the World Checklist and Atlas of Bamboos and Rattans, which named species then unknown to science.

• 1753
  Linnaeus names the first bamboo
  Carl Linnaeus published the name Arundo bambos in Species Plantarum, a species now placed in the genus Bambusa.^{6Things you should know about bamboo · Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew ↗}
• 1826
  The first bamboo reaches Kew
  Phyllostachys nigra, the black bamboo, arrived at Kew Gardens in 1826 and became the garden's first bamboo.^{6Things you should know about bamboo · Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew ↗}
• 1891
  Kew plants its Bamboo Garden
  Kew planted its Bamboo Garden in 1891 on the site of a disused gravel pit.^{6Things you should know about bamboo · Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew ↗}
• 1957
  China begins protecting the giant panda
  Panda protection efforts in China began in 1957 and reserve building followed from the 1960s onward.^{13Giant Panda · WWF-UK ↗}
• 1996
  San Diego Zoo begins its panda partnership
  The zoo's international conservation partnership with China began in 1996.^{12Giant Panda - Ailuropoda melanoleuca · San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance ↗}
• 2004
  Flowering wave begins
  Start of the flowering wave that would run to 2009. ^{8Flower-fruit dynamics, visitor-predator patterns and chemical preferences in the tropical bamboo, Melocanna baccifera · PLOS ONE ↗}
• 2008
  Famine conditions grip Mizoram
  The rodent plague left roughly 100,000 people without staple food and destroyed tens of thousands of tonnes of paddy.^{11Mizoram on the Verge of Another Mautam? · Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses ↗}