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| A bamboo tray at the Eden Project, Cornwall, UK. (photo Julie May) |
There are over a thousand species of bamboo (Gigantocholoa), a primitive grass growing in a variety of forms from tiny dwarfs to towering tropical giants. The tropical giant bamboo (Dendrocalamus asper) is the fastest growing plant on the planet, recorded growing 1.2m skywards in 24 hours! Not only does bamboo grow fast, it begins growing again immediately after harvesting. A sustainable product easily replaced.
Gigantocholoa is a tropical to subtropical plant. The distribution of bamboo in general ranges from 50°N of Sakhalin in north Japan to 47°S in Chile. It occurs in altitudes up to 4,000m, from the warm humid tropics to the cold areas of northern Japan.
Common Uses:
- Bamboo is one of the most versatile plants on earth, useful for its lightweight strength, which comes from its hollow stems, for its ease of working and for its simple beauty.
- It is used by half the world’s people in thousands of products from huge skyscraper scaffolding to tiny gramophone needles and from slide rules to skins of aeroplanes. It can be used to start a cooking fire in a wet rainforest and its ashes can be used to polish jewels and manufacture electric batteries. It has made bicycles, windmills, musical instruments, kitchen utensils, paper, clothing, scales and walls strong enough to resist flood and tide, and bridges up to 260m long in China.
- Bamboo is suited to low-technology processing, as well as industrial manufacturing techniques. It is an ideal building material for low-cost, low-impact, earthquake-resistant housing projects.
- Within its stem walls short, tough fibres sit in a resilient softer matrix providing nature’s version of fibreglass. It has great tensile strength, splits straight and is very hard. You can grow your own house from bamboo every five years.
- The young shoots of Gigantocholoa are eaten as a vegetable.
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