14 JAPANESE BAMBOOS. 



Pacific coast, and his brother has a grove at Bakersfield in which 

 stems over 40 feet high are said to be growing-. The Golden Gate 

 Park has several clumps which are very promising, and Mr. McLaren, 

 the superintendent, was most enthusiastic over an offer by Mr. Lathrop 

 to present several thousand to the park, with which to start a grove or 

 two of more than a half acre in extent. In the grounds of a nursery 

 company at Niles, Cal., there are several rows (PI. VIII) of the tim- 

 ber bamboo, individuals of which are certainly 25 feet in height; and 

 a beautiful little grove, probably of Phyllostachys quiUoi, in the town 

 of Berkeley, was destroyed a few years ago to make way for a street. 

 In Florida the well-known nursery firms have already imported many 

 different species. 



Mr. Lathrop is assisting the Department of Agriculture in an attempt 

 to introduce on a large scale the best of the Japanese timber sorts 

 and arouse the interest of a large class of cultivators in those regions 

 where the plants are likely to succeed, and it is to be hoped that the 

 time is not far off when many thousands of young plants will be set 

 out through these sections of the United States. 



GENERAL CHARACTERS OF THE JAPANESE BAMBOOS. 



Bamboos are not trees, although their stems or culms are sometimes 

 as large as tree trunks, and it is essential that their character as grasses 

 be kept in mind. 



They have the power of producing seeds, which resemble (in Japa- 

 nese species, at least) kernels of rice or barley, but they flower as a 

 rule only at intervals of many years, and very few of the flowers ever 

 form seed. The formation of mature seed is so uncommon in Japan 

 that Mr. Makino, of the Tokyo Botanic Gardens, who is writing a 

 monograph on the family, says he has never seen the seed of certain 

 of the common species. 



In the almost total absence of the method of reproduction by seed 

 the bamboos have developed their rhizomes, or underground stems, 

 and it is upon these that the spread and multiplication of the individ- 

 uals depends. Unlike an ordinary tree, therefore, a clump of bamboos 

 has underground stems in addition to its root system. A mass of these 

 creeping rhizomes, which grow out in various directions from the base 

 of the clump, give rise every year to the new shoots which increase 

 the diameter of the clump. A single rhizome, according to Dr. Shiga, 

 chief of the bureau of forest management in Tokyo, continues grow- 

 ing for four seasons and then ceases, but from the bases of the shoots 

 it produces new rhizomes grow out which have a similar period of 

 growth. If these underground stems or rhizomes are injured or 

 checked in any way from spreading freely through the soil, the clump 

 of aerial shoots will remain small; but if given rich soil and abundance 



