Bamboo Plant

Also known as bamboo tree one might think that bamboo is just as it is called, a tree. Nothing could be further from the truth. The bamboo plant is actually grass, plain and simple. Although woody in its appearance, the bamboo plant actually grows the same way as grass and will reach its full size over just one season. The rest of its time it is actually growing from the outside and inwards, making it harder and sturdier for each year.

The usage for the bamboo plant is enormous. You probably know that the shoots are eatable and probably are known all over the world as the main ingredient in Chinese take-away food.

You might even know that the bamboo plant has been used as an ancient weapon or in indoor decoration, even as floors. But you probably do not know that the bamboo plant can be used in scaffolding, bicycles, decorations, furniture and you can even do exclusive paper of it. The usage of the bamboo plant seems almost limitless.

As previous mentioned the bamboo plant grows its entire size over just one season. This makes it extremely fast growing and some kinds can grow over 3 feet! (1 meter) per day. An entire forest of bamboo plants could in other words appear overnight. But this is not very common and the usual growth rate for bamboo plants in parks and gardens lies around 1,6 inches (4 cm) per day. It is more convenient to have the bamboo plant under control and parks are not really a natural growing place for it.

The bamboo plant is a very invasive plant that, when planted can start to grow almost anywhere else in no time at all. The roots of the bamboo plant can grow almost as fast as the actual plant and will, when it finds a suitable spot, plant itself and start a new root system. This means that even if you remove the original bamboo plant there is still a good possibility that it will start to grow somewhere else. The only thing you can do is to chop down shoots as soon as they reach above ground level until the root system has exhausted all of its storage of energy. Letting one of these renegade bamboo plants to achieve photosynthesis will recharge the roots in no time and the battle begins all over again.

To get around this problem with renegade bamboo plants one might cut the ground around the bamboo plant a couple of times per year with a shovel. This will at least cut the shallowest roots and keep the problem at bay for some time. Nothing can be done about the deeper roots that might come up several meters away from the original bamboo plant. Another way is to fence the bamboo plant. That means that you encage its root system in a large concrete box or maybe even sturdy plastic. This will keep the roots from spreading but will cause a lot of side effects, one being that the bamboo plant more or less will be indestructible if you don’t remove the entire thing.

Bamboo plants are often
used as a building material.

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Bamboo plant