10 THE BAMBOO GARDEN CHAP. 
of summer. This, at any rate, is the view to which their 
unrivalled experience in the gardens of the Hamma at 
Algiers has led Messrs. Riviere. 
We should note that, although in late years large 
importations of all manner of Bamboos have taken place, 
at the time when the simultaneous flowering of Arundinaria 
japonica (Bambusa Métaké) took place, the whole of the plants 
then in cultivation in Europe and at Algiers were but offsets 
of the parent plant introduced by Siebold in 1850. It may 
be urged, therefore, that it was in truth one and the same 
plant, reaching maturity at the same moment in its various 
parts, wherever those parts might be distributed. Possibly 
the same may be said of Arundinaria falcata (or Tham- 
nocalamus Falconeri) and Phyllostachys flexuosa. Even so, 
the wonder is great. 
It might at first be imagined that the period of flowering 
would recur at regular fixed intervals, when the Bamboo has 
reached the length of its tether to life; but Sir Joseph 
Hooker in his Himalayan Journals, p. 107 (ed. 1891), says, 
“At about 4000 feet” (on Mount Tonglo, near Darjeeling) 
“the great Bamboo (Pao Lepcha) abounds; it flowers every 
year, which is not the case with all others of this genus, most 
of which flower profusely over large tracts of country once in 
a great many years, and then die away, their place being 
supplied by seedlings which grow with immense rapidity. 
This well-known fact is not due, as some suppose, to the life 
of the species being of such a duration, but to favourable 
circumstances in the season.” It used to be commonly said 
by natives of Bamboo-growing countries that the plants 
flowered once in thirty years, and that the age of a man 
