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Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: BAI-BAR |
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BAMBOO , the popular name for a tribe of grasses
spring from an underground root-stock and are often crowded to form dense clumps; the largest species reach 120 ft. inheight. The slender stem is hollow, and, as generally in grasses
The Bambuseae contain twenty-three genera and occur through-out the tropical zone, but very unevenly distributed; they also extend into the sub-tropical and even into the temperate zone. Tropical Asia is richest in species; in Africa there are very few. In Asia they extend into Japan and to io,000 ft. or more on the Himalayas; and in the Andes of South America they reach the snow-line. The fruit in Bambusa, Arundinaria and other genera resembles the grain generally characteristic of grasses, but in Dendrocalamus and others it is a nut, while rarely, as in Melocanna, it is fleshy and suggests an apple in size and appearance. The uses to which all the parts and products of the bamboo are applied in Oriental countries are almost endless. The soft and succulent shoots, when just beginning to spring , are cut off and served up at table like asparagus. Like that vegetable, also, they are earthed over to keep them longer fit for consumption; and they afford a continuous supply during the whole year, though it is more abundant in autumn. They are also salted and eaten with rice, prepared in the form of pickles or candied and preserved in sugar. As the plant grows older, a species of fluid is secreted in the hollow joints, in which a concrete substance once highly valued in the East for its medicinal qualities, called labaxir or tabascheer, is gradually developed. This substance, which has been found to be a purely siliceous 4bncretion, is possessed of peculiar optical properties. As a medicinal agent the bamboo is entirely inert, and it has never been received into the European materia medica.The grains of the bamboo are available for food, and the Chinese have a proverb that it produces seed more abundantly in years when the rice crop fails, which means, probably, that in times of dearth the natives look more after such a source of food. The Hindus eat it mixed with honey as a delicacy, equal quantities being put into a hollow joint, coated externally with clay, and thus roasted over a fire. The fleshly fruit of Melocanna is baked and eaten. The plant is a native of India, but is sometimes cultivated as in Mauritius. It is, however, the stem of the bamboo which is applied to the greatest variety of uses. Joints of sufficient size form water buckets; smaller ones are used as bottles, and among the Dyaks of Borneo they are employed as cooking vessels. Bamboo is extensively used as a timber wood
The bamboo is employed in the construction of all kinds of agricultural and domestic implements and in the materials and implements required in fishery. Bows are made of it by the union of two pieces with many bands; and, the septa being bored out and the lengths joined together, it is employed, as we use leaden pipes, in transmitting water to reservoirs or gardens. From the light and slender stalks shafts for arrows are obtained; and in the south-west of Asia there is a certain species of equally slender growth, from which writing-pens or reeds are made. A joint forms a holder for papers or pens, and it was in a joint of bamboo that silk-worm eggs were carried from China to Constantinople during the reign of Justinian. The outer cuticle of Oriental species is so hard that it forms a sharp
paper . Bamboos are imported to a considerable extent into Europe for the use of basket-makers, and for umbrella and walking-sticks. In short, the purposes to which the bamboo is applicable are almost endless, and well justify the opinion that " it is one of the most wonderful and most beautiful productions of the tropics, and one of Nature's most valuable gifts to uncivilized man " (A. R. Wallace, The Malay Archipelago).A number of species of bamboo are hardy
flowers
hardy
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