Plant Portraits 2. Bamboo

 Bamboos are giant grasses numbering 1500 species or more and classified in over 140 genera. They are essentially giant herbs, without true wood. Most have hollow stems with hard fibrous exteriors, valued throughout their tropical to temperate range as a source of fiber and wood-like construction material. They have been used for thousands of years for house construction, water conduits, baskets and weapons (e.g. bows and arrows). The young shoots serve as an edible vegetable. Giant pandas feed almost exclusively on the leaves and young shoots of bamboo in the southwestern mountains of China. 

In this cut bamboo surface, we can make out

the individual fibrous bundles packed close and 

cemented together. Most bundles contain 

water-conducting xylem and/or 

food-transporting phloem, surrounded 

by the hard, protective fibers. This, rather than 

layers of xylem, is what gives them their

wood-like hardness and strength. 

In modern times, there are even more applications. Laminated together, pieces of bamboo, replace hardwoods in the manufacture of flooring, furniture, chopping boards and many more. The individual fibrous bundles can be softened and separated for making clothing, pillows, etc. 

 A prehistoric family in what is now China pass through a bamboo grove and encounter a group of giant pandas, which feed almost exclusively on the leaves and tender shoots of at least 25 different species of bamboo.

One of the thousands of uses for bamboo in China was the handcrafting of scrolls used for writing books. Narrow strips of bamboo stem were cut and sown together in scrolls. They were written on with a highly durable ink made from soot mixed with animal based glues. This was the standard material for book-making for more than a thousand years, and some of the scrolls dating from the Han Dynasty are still legible a thousand years later.