I THE BAMBOO GARDEN 5 
flower. Roxburgh only once came across the flowers of 
Bambusa Baleoa. On the other hand, the male Bamboo 
(Dendrocalamus strictus), Dendrocalamus edulis, Arundinaria 
Hookeriana and some others, flower every year. But the 
most noteworthy phenomenon is the simultaneous flowering 
of certain Bamboos. When the given moment has come 
round, every plant of the same species, whether old or young, 
over a vast region will put forth its flowers at one and the 
same moment, and, having seeded, for a time the plant dis- 
appears. Auguste St. Hilaire, the botanist who explored 
Brazil, mentions a forest of the Toboca, a gramineous plant, 
where he was entranced by the aérial beauty of the long 
canes, from 40 to 50 feet high, bending in elegant arches, 
crossing one another in every direction, tangling their huge 
panicles and giving glimpses of the deep blue sky through a 
spreading and diaphanous web of foliage. “The plant was 
then in flower. When I passed that way a few months later 
the forest had disappeared.” Colonel Munro called attention 
to the reports upon this subject contained in vols. xii. and 
xiv. of the Journal of the Agricultural and Horticultural 
Society of India. Sir W. Sleeman records the fact observed 
by him that in 1836 all the great Bamboos, which for 
twenty-five years had been the most beautiful feature of the 
valley Dehra Dun, between the Ganges and the Jumna to 
the south-west of Gurwhal, began to flower and seed—canes 
which had only been transplanted during the previous season 
following the example of their twenty-year-old mates— 
after which all perished together. Wallich tells of a grove 
of Bamboos surrounding the town of Rampore, in Rohilcund, 
which flowered and died in 1824. He was informed that the 
