Bamboo :: Botany

Bamboo Gramineae, the grass family, has provided civilization throughout history with a bounty of food and many other uses. The top three economically important plants of the world are grasses: wheat corn, and rice. Human kind probably would not have survived if not for the grasses. The sub-family Bambusoideae, is certainly no exception. These are the bamboos. Consisting of 75 genera and over 1000 species, these unique plants have played a diverse and important role in the development of society, as we know it today. Morphology The bamboo plant is constructed of a system of segmented axes. This is depicted by the regular internodal lengths and prominent nodes (McClure 10). They resemble telescoping antennas, but at a constant diameter. The culm is the above ground stem, this is what is used for most all of the many applications. The culm is woody and either hollow or solid, however most species exhibit some degree of hollowness. The length and thickness of the culm varies greatly between species. Some species can get as tall as 130 feet and be more than a foot in diameter--these have been reported to grow at nearly two inches each hour (Hanke 291). Indeed this would be impressive to see, definitely not like the grasses most of us are familiar with. Branches, also segmented. arise from the culm. Upon the branches are to be found leaves, with petioles. The fact that the leaves have petioles helps to set the bamboos apart from the other grasses. The leaves and young shoots are the parts eaten by Pandas. The Panda subsists on no other plant or food source. Bamboos alone keep them going strong. More on that later. New culms, or shoots, are produced from an extensive rhizome system. Simply, rhizomes are modified stems, usually growing underground (Fig. 1). The rhizomes cause the "clump habit" of growth exhibited by the bamboos. "Clump habit" refers to the culms growing in close proximity to each other, such as a "tuft of grass", so to speak. There are basically two types of rhizomes'. pachymorph and leptomorph. Most species exhibit both, to a greater or lesser degree. Pachymorph rhizomes are very compact. They are associated with autumnal growth and produce a dense clump of culms. Leptomorph rhizomes, associated with spring growth, spread a little more. than pachymorph, in some cases a lot more. In other words they are responsible for the lateral growth of a given stand, or clump, of a bamboo species.