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There is no grander landscape decoration than the gigantic fountain 

 of verdure produced by a well-grown clump of bamboo. At ten years of 

 age a plant should consist of fifty or sixty stalks, the yearlings rising 

 erect above the mass to their full height of over 70 feet, their tops for 

 20 feet or more lightly branched and tracing against the sky a delicate 

 network. Below, the older culms, fully feathered out and heavy with 

 leaves, bend outward on all sides in graceful curves like great ostrich 

 feathers. The outer rows almost sweep the ground with their tips, and 

 swaying in the wind give glimpses of the ascending columns, standing 

 in close ranks, polished and as green as emerald. 



About the first week in July the new shoots of the year make their 

 appearance. A dozen or more of the mighty buds, sheathed in hairy 

 scales, push their way out of the ground. They resemble gigantic 

 asparagus shoots, and, like them, grow only at the tip, having attained 

 their full diameter of 1 or 5 inches before they leave the ground, and 

 only diminish in girth very gradually as they ascend. Each joint of 

 the young stalk is protected by a broad scale of creamy white, which 

 is thrown off as the culm matures, and these litter the ground in late 

 summer as shingles are scattered about in the building of a roof. At 

 the start and until they have risen 15 or 20 feet from the ground, the 

 shoots grow in length at the rate of 8 inches in twenty-four hours, but 

 during the heat of August and as the tapering stalks decrease in girth 

 they rush on toward completion at the rate of 12 to 18 inches each day. 



By the middle of September, or in nine or ten weeks from the start- 

 ing of their growth, the July brood of culms will have reached their 

 full height of 70 feet and upward. Another crop of buds appears 

 after the first are nearly full grown, but these in Florida never make 

 culms; the cool nights of September chill them to death. During the 

 first season the new stalks produce branches only at the top, and these 

 are scantily supplied with tufts of leaves. The second summer the 

 development of branches extends downward along the stem and the 

 tops feather out and bend under the weight of foliage. A third season 

 of active branch growth brings the culm to full maturity, after which 

 it has passed its prime and enters upou a period of decadence which 

 ends in the fifth or sixth year with the snapping off of the dead and 

 brittle stalk in some high wind. 



The culms of Bambusa vulgaris have moderately thin walls, the hol- 

 low joints somewhat over a foot long and the partitions which divide 

 them rather strong and thick, but brittle enough when dry to be broken 

 out by a sharp blow. By means of an iron rod it is easy to convert the 

 stalks into tubes, which may be used as water pipes, or they may be 

 split in half and converted into troughs. They are easily put to numer- 

 ous uses in a Southern garden. Cut into convenient lengths and' the 

 partitions removed, they make excellent and durable subsoil drains. 

 Split and converted into troughs they make the best of roofs, being- 

 laid like tile, the alternate pieces inverted and covering the edges of 



