10 JAPANESE BAMBOOS. 



GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS. 



The bamboo groves of Japan are not only one of the most striking- 

 features of its landscapes but one of its most profitable plant cultures. 

 . The largest well-kept groves in the world, except perhaps those of 

 Burma, are growing in the central provinces, and some of these are 

 several square miles in area. In the Tropics generally the bamboo is 

 cultivated in small clumps, but in Japan it is grown with almost the 

 same care that is given to the field crops. 



No other nation has found so many artistic uses for the plant as 

 the Japanese, and in no other country, except it be China, is such a 

 variety of forms employed by the common people. 



The plant is a necessit} T to the Japanese peasant; it forms one of the 

 favorite themes of the Japanese artist, and out of it are manufactured 

 some of the most delicate works of Japanese art. The bamboo is in 

 fact one of the greatest cultivated plants of this plant-loving race. 



It is a popular misconception that bamboos grow only in the Tropics. 

 Japan is a land of bamboos, and yet where these plants grow it is not 

 so warm in winter as it is in California. In regions where the snows 

 are so heavy that they often break down the young stems and where 

 the thermometer drops to 15° (F.) below the freezing point, the largest 

 of the Japanese species grows and forms large groves. 



For many years the gardens of France and England have been 

 beautified by clumps of these Japanese bamboos, and even in America 

 occasional plants can be found growing in the open air, which prove 

 the possibility of acclimatizing these representatives of this most use- 

 ful family of plants. A temperature of 6° F. has not proved fatal to 

 a large number of the hardy kinds in England. 



Although nearly every description of those regions where bamboos 

 grow gives some account of their uses, there is still in the minds of 

 many Americans a doubt as to the value of these plants for growth in 

 the United States. 



Bamboos are not like new grains or fodders which will yield prompt 

 returns in money, but they are essentially wood-producing plants, 

 whose timber is unlike that of any temperate-zone forest trees, and is 

 suitable for the manufacture of a multitude of articles for which our 

 own woods are not well adapted. They are the most convenient plants 

 in the world for cultivation about a farmhouse, and in those regions 

 where they can grow T would, if introduced, prove themselves in time 

 one of the greatest additions imaginable to the plants of the common 

 "people. 



The Japanese and Chinese, who are the most practical agriculturists 

 in the world, have for centuries depended upon the bamboo as one of 

 their most useful cultures, and the natives of tropical India and the 

 Malay Archipelago would be much more at a loss without it than the 



