BAMBOOS 



The Culm 



THE INDIAN BAMBOOS 



Kapid Growth. 



Gregarious 

 Habit. 



Monotony of 

 Forests. 



Value to the 

 Traveller. 



the different species. One peculiarity is preserved by all bamboos, namely, 

 the rapid growth of the young shoots. This is a most important provision, 

 for a branched shoot could never penetrate through the crowded mass 

 of mature culms. Having in about a month reached its full height and 

 thickness, the shoot commences to produce its branches and branchlets, 

 and thus weighted, it curves into the graceful plume which is the 

 elegant and familiar feature of most species. 



As a rule the bamboo is gregarious, establishing itself so thoroughly 

 over certain portions of wild forest tracts that it very nearly exterminates 

 all other forms of vegetation. Seen from a height, nothing could be more 

 lovely, but, to the traveller who for days together may have to clear a 

 path for himself, the interminable monotony, the twilight shade and death- 

 like stillness, broken only by the sighing of the grating culms, make the 

 bamboo jungle dreary in the extreme. In mixed forests, an occasional 

 clump has a most pleasing effect. It supplies the traveller, moreover, 

 with some of his most essential materials of equipment. Indeed, where 

 bamboos are plentiful tents may be dispensed with, for, through the expert 

 handling of that material, the camp followers, armed with large knives, 

 can in a remarkably short time erect a comfortable hut and furnish it 

 with beds, tables and chairs, all constructed from the bamboo. Sir J. D. 

 Hooker (Him. Journ.) observes that it took " the Leptchas about twenty 

 minutes to construct a table and two bedsteads within our tent." Lewin 

 (Wild Races of South-Eastern India, 1870, 28-30) says: "The hillman 

 would die without the bamboo, and the thing he finds hardest of credence 

 is that in other countries the bamboo does not grow, and that men live in 

 ignorance of it." A writer in The Pall Mall Gazette published in 1893 a 

 characteristic of charmingly told story of bamboo and its uses. He said the Orient was 

 wreathed in bamboo; it was the one characteristic common to all the 

 Bast, bamboo was in fact symbolic of the East. Mason (Burma and 

 Its People (ed. Theobald), 1883, ii., 102-3) gives a brief sketch of the 

 varied uses of the bamboo, in which the methods of procuring fire from 

 that material may be found specially interesting. 



Popularly, bamboos may be divided into those which grow in separate 

 clusters or clumps, and those which send up their shoots singly from an 

 underground root-stock, and thus form continuous patches of perhaps 

 many miles in extent. The former are characteristic of the tropical, and 

 the latter of the extra-tropical or temperate forests. Each clump bears 

 from 30 to 100 culms, which attain a height of from 30 to 100, or even 

 130 feet. The creeping bamboos are often exceedingly valuable. Of this 

 class may be mentioned Pseudostachyuiu polymorphiini an East 

 Himalayan and Burmese form and Melocanna bambusoides, one of 

 the most valuable species and one which is extensively exported from 

 Chittagong. Of this kind may also be mentioned Banibusa nutaits 

 a Darjeeling bamboo. The distance apart of the culms is a feature of 

 commercial value, since the difficulty of removal of ripe culms from dense 

 clumps is a serious disadvantage in some bamboos. A few are climbers 

 (such as Arundinaria Prainii, Cephalostachi/tiin capita f tint and 

 IMLelocalatnus compactiflorus), their festoons and pendulous boughs 

 passing gracefully from tree to tree. 



For about two-thirds of its lower portion, the culm of most bamboos 

 is unbranched, or possesses only very short and inconspicuous branches. 

 On escaping from the ground the shoot attains very rapidly its full dia- 



106 



the Bast. 



Popular 

 Classification 

 of Bamboos. 



Culms to 

 Clump. 



Creeping 

 Bamboos. 



Climbing 

 Bamboos. 



Branching of the 

 Bamboo. 



