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BAMBOO: THE MOST VERSATILE, BEAUTIFUL PLANT ON EARTH
The thing that fascinated me most about my trip to China (Chaska Herald, page 9, November 16) was the bamboo. I observed bamboo in use every day, in every city, throughout the countryside, in hundreds of different applications.
Our trip began in Hong Kong and my first glimpse of bamboo was the erector set-like maze of scaffolding shrouding scores of high-rise buildings under construction in this city of 12 million. Hong Kong's guild of high-rise scaffold riggers are said to earn just under $100 per day for this risky work involving lashing together bamboo poles using strips of split bamboo. Stronger and lighter than steel, bamboo scaffolding is tied to building facades rather than being self-supporting from the ground. It has withstood typhoons when steel framework has crumbled.
As the days passed, my 20 fellow travelers joined in my visual hunt for new and different uses for bamboo and we concluded that, for the Chinese, bamboo is sort of the equivalent of duct tape in the U.S.
In most of China, bicycles are the primary mode of transportation. Unbelievable volumes of freight are moved on the front and rear of bicycles. Live market-weight pigs, for example, are moved to market stuffed inside circular bamboo wicker baskets, one basket mounted on each side of a bike. I don't have a clue how they get the pigs inside the baskets.
The steep hills in the city of Chongqing make bicycle riding impossible here so the freight and commerce move on the human back, hanging from ropes tied to the ends of 4 ft. bamboo carry poles. Each morning, thousands of Chinese porters-for-hire walk the streets and riverfront carrying their empty bamboo pole and ropes, searching for things to carry. All kinds of things: live chickens, bricks, pails of human excrement (for fertilizer), boxes of Magnavox televisions, four 100-lb. bags of rice...and our group's suitcases from our bus, down 146 steps, across the cobbled-together gangplank and finally onto our Yangtze River cruise ship.
My appreciation for bamboo has only grown since I've returned home and done some additional research.
One writer described bamboo as "the most versatile and beautiful plant on earth." No growing thing has so many and so varied uses as bamboo. Scholars have compiled catalogs of well over a thousand applications for this elegant grass. Larger varieties have been called "poor man's timber" because the plant is so easy to harvest, transport and assemble as framework, siding, roof tiles, fences, matting, irrigation pipes and rafts.
Worldwide, there are about 1,000 species of bamboo; China has 300. Though they vary widely in color, shape and size, they all share a common characteristic of a woody culm, or stalk. Most culms are hollow, light, stiff and strong.
No other living thing grows so tall so fast. One common species grows almost four feet in 24 hours.
A peculiar fact about bamboo is that the plant flowers only at long intervals -- 30, 60 or even 120 years apart. At about the same time, all plants of the same species, wherever they are in the world, burst into bloom. A Japanese scientist has traced the flowering of black bamboo back more than 1,000 years. The first recorded bloom date was A.D. 813 and documents show it has blossomed every 120 years. Each time bamboo blooms, the culms die but the groves survive because some rhizomes live on and the fallen seeds take root.
Typically, bamboo sends up new shoots every year; in between, the rhizome develops underground. Unlike a tree, bamboo does not acquire more girth as it grows; the new sprout emerges full diameter. It reaches full height in 60 to 90 days.
The largest species of bamboo, Dendrocalamus giganteus, grows 120 feet high and a foot in diameter.
Chinese bridges, hanging from cables of twisted bamboo, are ancestors of the world's suspension spans. Marco Polo described the use of bamboo cables for towing ships in China in the 13th century. Until the Chinese invented paper more than 2,000 years ago, they wrote their literature and history on bamboo slips.
My trip notes are full of other fascinating uses for bamboo. Near Wuhan, I observed dozens of quonset greenhouses being constructed with bamboo pole frames. Two rows of culms were placed in the ground 25 feet apart and then bent towards each other and tied to form a canopy, which was covered with plastic. I may try building a similar structure next summer out of limber willow stems.
Cultured pearl platforms in the South China Sea are constructed of bamboo. Fishermen and farmers use bamboo poles to navigate their bamboo rafts up and down rivers. Tightly woven bamboo hats protect the heads of field workers from sun and rain. Pet crickets are kept in bamboo mini-baskets.
Finally, I'll remember the scene of my wife being carried up a steep set of steps from the Yangtze River to a small town we visited. She rode high in a sedan chair carried by two men who balanced the chair on their shoulders using long bamboo poles. "What a great way to travel," she remarked at the top of the hill.
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PUTTING DOWN ROOTS:
A Delightful Blend of
Gardening Wisdom, Wit
and Whimsy
$10 + $2 for shipping
by Cliff Johnson |
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