BOTANICAL INFORMATION. 
On the growth in length of Bamboo shoots ; by Professor von ManTIUS. 
Bulletin of the Royal Academy of Sciences of Munich. No. 33. 
May 12th, 1848. 
Dr. Wallich, late Director of the Botanical Garden of Calcutta, has com- 
municated to me, in a letter dated London, 24th Feb., 1848, a series of 
measurements, made with regard to the diurnal growth of several species 
of Bamboo in that Garden. They were made by the native head-gardener, 
Mooty-Oollah, a Mahommedan, who, with his late countryman, Kurreem- 
Khan, is spoken highly of on account of his knowledge. (After the latter a . 
genus has been named Kurrimia, no. 4334 of the Lithograph Catalogue 
of the Herbarium of the East Indian Company, now in the Linnean 
Society’s Museum.) Although these daily measurements are unaccom- 
panied by any data of the temperature, neither are there any anatomical 
enquiries, which, according to Schleiden (Elements of Scientific Botany, 
second edition, p. 437), are justly considered as requisite, especially 
the generation of new cells, and the extension and enlargement of ex- 
isting ones, in order to obtain a correct insight into the process of growth 
and its periodicity ; yet we consider these measurements, made in the 
East Indies, not without their interest. E. Meyer made measurements 
of the scape of Amaryllis Belladonna (Transactions of the Association 
for the promotion of Horticulture in Prussia, vol. v. p. 110) and stems of 
the Wheat and Barley (Linnea, vol. iv. 1829, A 25 Mulder has insti- 
tuted similar ones on the leaf of Urania a (Bydragen tot de 
nat. Wetensch., voliv. p. 200) ; and Gaii gewa 1843, p. 36), on 
the scape of Agave (Littaea) geminiflora. But all T plants exhibit 
far smaller extensions than the colossal stalks of Bambusa, whose 
shoots (Bam. gigantea) grew noi less than twenty-five feet, * nine 
inches (English) in length, during the thirty-one days of July, 1833; 
while a flower-scape of Littaea geminiflora in the Garden at Nymphen- | 
burgh, only grew 134 feet from the 14th of August to the 10th of 
December, 1842. i 
* “These shoots (Bambusa Tulda, Roxb.) rise simple to their full size, from 
twenty to seventy feet in height, and from six to twelve inches in circumference in 
the course of about thirty days."—Roxb. Fl. Ind., vol. ii. (1832) p. 194. 
