391 REGENERATION BY MEANS OF CULMS. 



cept in short pieces. 



RESUME. The principal facts discussed in the preceding para- 

 graphs may now with advantage be brought together and briefly 

 stated thus : 



I. The bamboo plant, from being at first a single individual, 

 becomes a compound entity or clump, the clump expanding itself 

 by the production of new shoots. In the open this expansion has no 

 limit and ends only with the death of the clump, and the number 

 of new shoots follows a steadily increasing series from year to year, 

 In a close forest a similar expansion occurs until the chimp has 

 occupied nearly the whole of the space available to it. This is 

 the culminating point ; thenceforward the rate of expansion and' 

 the number of culms produced each year diminishes, and when all 

 the available space has been occupied, no new growth is possible 

 except in replacement of casualties. 



II. During the ascending phase (of expansion) the size of the 

 shoots produced in successive years goes on increasing from mere 

 switches to the maximum dimensions attainable by the given 

 species in the given soil and locality ; and when these dimensions 

 have been reached, no further improvement is possible. 



III. New culms are produced almost exclusively upon the 

 shoots of the youngest generation with the cooperation principally 

 of the shoots of the immediately preceding generation, so that the 

 removal of older shoots, especially those from the fourth generation 

 backwards, will have no appreciable effect on the size and number 

 of the new shoots. As the amount of new production will be 

 proportionate to the amount of foliage, and as the same amount of 

 foliage will be borne by a few properly-spaced culms as by a larger 

 number more crowded together, the thinning out of the oldest and 

 crooked and weakest shoots will have no effect on the vegetation 

 of the clump or the aggregate basal area of the new culms. 



IV. The aggregate basal area of the new culms being the same, 

 their individual size, within the maximum limit attainable by the 

 species under prevailing conditions, will be greater, the smaller 

 their number is. 



V. The larger and more vigorous the parent culms of the two 

 last generations are, the larger will be the new shoots which they 

 will produce. 



VI. New culms keep coming up even in the middle of the 

 clump, so that, saving the case of a few exceptional species which 

 throw out very long runner-like rhizomes, the clump tends to be- 

 come so overcrowded that the safe extraction of the shoots becomes 



