BAMBOO by waynesword palomar
Bamboos typically form dense, impenetrable clumps or spread by creeping rhizomes. Clumping bamboos are mostly native to tropical contries, such as Indonesia, Burma, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, India, Thailand and southern China. A few "mountain bamboos" from the Himalayas and the Andes are "temperate clumpers" that can survive in areas with freezing winters. Running bamboos are mostly from temperate climates of Japan, northern China, Siberia and one native species in the United States. Bamboos range in size from low, shrubby forms only ten feet (3 m)@������< �*g giants over 100 feet (30 m). Aerial stems (called culms) develop from scaly, underground stems called rhizomes that bear roots at the nodes where the leaflike scales are attached.
The structural strength and hardness of bamboo stems is due to masses of heavily lignified tracheids and fibers associated with the vascular bundles. The wood (xylem) of conifers and dicot trees is composed of concentric layers of dense, lignified cells containing cellulose and lignin in their secondary walls. In addition to cellulose and lignin, the thick-walled fibers of bamboo also contain up to five percent silica in the form of silicon dioxide (SiO2). Although bamboo culms do not have the structure of true wood, they are very hard because they contain silica and lignin.A beautiful cutting board made from numerous flattened strips of bamboo (Phyllostachys pubescens) glued together. Through a specialized heating process, the natural sugar in the wood is caramelized to produce the honey color. Vascular bundles typical of a woody monocut are clearly visible on the smooth cross section. The transverse surface of numerous lignified tracheids and fibers is actually harder than maple.
Bamboos are very useful plants throughout the Old and New World tropics. It has been estimated that they are used by more than half of the world's human population every day. According to A. Lewington (Plants For People, 1990), more than 1000 different products are made from bamboo. Bamboo shoots are edible and are a major component of Asian dishes. Since fresh shoots are more flavorful than canned, bamboo farms have been established in the United States. In Tanzania, "bamboo wine" is made from the fermented juice of the wine bamboo (Oxytenanthera braunii). Although bamboo shoots are tender and weak, they grow very rapidly. In fact, there are records of tropical bamboos growing 100 feet in three months, an astonishing 0.0002 miles per hour! When the shoots leaf out in sunlight they become very strong and woody (lignified). Some bamboos stems have the same tensile strength as certain types of steel and are used to reinforce concrete. After about ten years the stems begin to deteriorate in humid tropical regions. Bamboo canes are used to make cooking utensils, blow guns, toys and furniture. Bamboo pulp is used to make paper, and small, polished stem segments are sometimes used in necklaces.
Along with palms, bamboos are one of the world's most important building materials, particularly in areas where timber trees are in short supply. Large timber bamboos, including Dendrocalamus giganteus and Bambusa oldhamii are used for scaffolding, bridge-building, water pipes, storage vessels and to build houses. In fact, as a building material bamboo plays an important role in almost every country in which it occurs. In Burma and Bangladesh, about fifty percent of the houses are made almost entirely of bamboo. In Java, woven bamboo mats and screens are commonly used in timber house frames. With modern polymer glues and bonding cements, bamboos are made into plywood, matboard and laminated beams.
Bamboo has been a major building material for boats in China for countless centuries. In fact, the sectioned culms which divide the stem internodes into separate compartments may have given early boat-builders the idea of making water-tight bulkheads. Many of the junks, sampans and rafts that navigate the vast waterways of China are constructed partly or entirely of bamboo. Grass-like members of the sedge family (Cyperaceae) have also been used to make sea-worthy boats, including papyrus (Cyperus papyrus) and bulrushes of the genus Schoenoplectus. For centuries Oru Indians of Lake Titicaca in Bolivia have made boats from totora reeds (Schoenoplectus tatora). Four long bundles of reeds which taper at both ends are firmly bound together with strong ichu grass (Stipa ichu). Even the sails are made of from totora reeds which have been split and sewn together lengthwise. In his book, Sea Routes to Polynesia (1968), Thor Heyerdahl postulated that sweet potatoes were carried across the Pacific by Peruvian Indians before Europeans began to sail the world's oceans. He tested his hypothesis in 1947 by sailing a balsa wood raft, the Kon-Tiki, fashioned after the reed rafts of the Oru Indians living on Lake Titicaca in Bolivia. Although Heyerdahl's hypothesis about the transoceanic exchange of sweet potatoes by skillful pre-Columbian sailors remains an enigma (at least to some skeptics), his New World origin for the coconut has been rejected by most botanists.
Reeds and bamboos are very significant plants in the development and evolution of musical wind instruments. The variety of flutes and panpipes used by Andean musicians of Peru, Bolivia and Ecuador are made from native bamboo species, including the genus Chusquea and the pantropical reed Arundo donax. Different lengths and widths of the hollow culms produce the light airy sounds of small sikus or zampoñas and the deep bass notes of Bolivian toyos. Some of the world's most beautiful music is produced by these relatively crude instruments. Panpipes have also been made in France and the Balkan countries, primarily from the reed Arudo donax collected in marshlands of the Danube delta.
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