dl 
There is no grander landscape decoration than the gigantic fountain 
of verdure produced by a well-grown clump of bamboo. Atten years of 
age a plant should consist of fifty or sixty stalks, the yearlings rising 
erect above the mass to their full height of over 70 feet, their tops for 
20 feet or more lightly branched and tracing against the sky a delicate 
network. Below, the older culms, fully feathered out and heavy with 
leaves, bend outward on all sides in graceful curves like great ostrich 
feathers. The outer rows almost sweep the ground with their tips, and 
Swaying in the wind give glimpses of the ascending columns, standing 
in close ranks, polished and as green as emerald. 
About the first week in July the new shoots of the year make their 
appearance. A dozen or more of the mighty buds, sheathed in hairy 
scales, push their way out of the ground. They resemble gigantic 
asparagus shoots, and, like them, grow only at the tip, having attained 
their full diameter of 4 or 5 inches before they leave the ground, and 
only diminish in girth very gradually as they ascend. Each joint of 
the young stalk is protected by a broad scale of creamy white, which 
is thrown off as the culm matures, and these litter the ground in late 
summer as shingles are scattered about in the building of a roof. At 
the start and until they have risen 15 or 20 feet from the ground, the 
shoots grow in length at the rate of 8 inches in twenty-four hours, but 
during the heat of August and as the tapering stalks decrease in girth 
they rush on toward completion at the rate of 12 to 18 inches each day. 
By the middle of September, or in nine or ten weeks from the start- 
ing of their growth, the July brood of culms will have reached their 
full height of 70 feet and upward. Another crop of buds appears 
after the first are nearly full grown, but these in Florida never make 
culms; the cool nights of September chill them to death. During the 
first season the new stalks produce branches only at the top, and these 
are scantily supplied with tufts of leaves. The second summer the 
development of branches extends downward along the stem and the 
tops feather out and bend under the weight of foliage. A third season 
of active branch growth brings the culm to full maturity, after which | 
it has passed its prime and enters upon a period of decadence which 
ends in the fifth or sixth year with the snapping off of the dead and 
brittle stalk in some high wind. 
The culms of Bambusa vulgaris have moderately thin walls, the hol- 
low joints somewhat over a foot long and the partitions which divide 
them rather strong and thick, but brittle enough when dry to be broken 
out by a sharp blow. By means of an iron rod it is easy to convert the 
stalks into tubes, which may be used as water pipes, or they may be 
split in half and converted into troughs. They are easily put to numer- 
ous uses in a Southern garden. Cut into convenient lengths and the 
partitions removed, they make excellent and durable subsoil drains. 
Split and converted into troughs they make the best of roofs, being 
Jaid like tile, the alternate pieces inverted and covering the edges of 
