4S6 
THE TROPICAL AQF?IOULTURIST. fjANUARy i, 1892. 
It was during the years 1863—64, while engaged 
in Coffee planting in the district of Wynaad, in the 
province of Malabar, that I witnessed the phenome- 
non of the seeding of Bambusa arundinacea. The 
plantation I had charge of at the time was situated 
in the midst of an extensive Bamboo jungle within 
but a short distance of the frontier of Mysore, and 
on the main road from the Malabar coast to Serin- 
gapatam and Bangalore. At the time of my arrival 
in the district, the magnificent Bamboo forest, in- 
terspersed with such deciduous hard-wooded trees 
as Teak, Kino, Rose, and Sandal woods, and others 
of an equally valuable description, was, although 
tinknown to me at the time, upon the eve of a 
sudden and wonderful transformation. Hundreds of 
square miles thickly covered with the exquisitely 
graceful clumps of the Bamboo, giving to the lands- 
cape as far as the eye could reach a beauty difficult 
to describe, were to be charged in the brief period 
of a little over a year by fire into a charred and 
blackened wilderness, the? myriads of nodding plumes 
that for half a century had graced the woodlands 
were, at the call of Nature to blossom, yield their 
seed, and disappear from the face of the earth as 
by the breath of a destroying angel. 
The south-west monsoon rains of 1863 had ceased 
about the middle of September, leaving the jungle 
tracts of Malabar in the very heyday of their glori- 
ous greenery, the Bamboo plumes waving to and 
fro by the gentle breezes still prevailing from the 
westward, glistening in the light of a tropical sun, 
and, as yet, showing no trace of the change they 
were so soon to undergo. As the season advanced, 
hot parching winds from the east began to take the 
place of the more kindly breezes from the west, and 
by Christmas, the leaves of the Bamboo thickly 
covered the ground. Simultaneously with the dis- 
appearance of the leaves from the laterals, the in- 
florescence began to appear, and the aspect of the 
country in every direction changed as if by magic. 
No one was prepared for such an eventuality, and 
the English planters in the district were struck with 
something 'akin to alarm when the fact dawned upon 
them that,' in the course of a very brief period, not 
a living Bamboo would be left in the forest. A few 
there were who refused to believe that the culms 
would perish after ripening their seeds, and were 
only persuaded by the actual realisation of the fact. 
As nearly as I can remember, the seed was matiired 
by the middle of May, the panicles of grain weigh- 
ing down the clums to a third of their length, and 
giving them withal a graceful as well as fruitful 
appearance. When the seed, which was about the 
size and had much the appearance of small Oats, 
had fully matured, it fell to the ground in showers 
by every passing breeze, and then came a happy 
season for both man and bird. Sea-fowl, spur-fowl, 
partridge, jungle-fowl, and quail, with which the 
jungles abounded, revelled in, and got fat upon, the 
-plentiful supply of good food so suddenly bestowed 
upon them by the hand of Nature, and man himself 
was not slow to take advantage of the offering. The 
coolies from Mysore employed on the Coffee planta- 
tions could with difficulty be induced to remain 
steadily at work during this Bamboo harvest, and 
the jungle tribes could not be persuaded to work at 
all l5ut subsisted solely on the fallen grain of the 
Bamboo, so long as any could be gathered from the 
ground. This seed they appeared to highly value, 
and, judging from appearances, it seemed to be very 
nutritious. The grain was ground into meal by the 
aid of small hand-mills, and two modes were em- 
ployed in its cooking— the one by baking m the 
form of cakes, and the other in boilmg it into a 
kind of thick porridge. I myself ate the cakes on 
several occasions, and found them fairly palatable. 
These jungle tribes, although perfectly aware of the 
value of the vast granary thus laid at their teet, 
were, notwithstanding, iniprovidoiit to a degree. 
They ate abundantly of the fruit whilst it lay on 
the KTOund, but made no provision against the ap- 
proaching destruction of the whole by jungles fires. 
?^o, after these had licked the ground, they had, 
nerforce, to return to work on the Coifee plantations. 
At the height of the dry season, and when the 
earth was thickly covered with a coating of Bamboo 
leaves and seed, these fires began to do their work, 
and, apparently, so completely that it was hard 
to believe that a single Bambo seed could have es- 
caped destruction, and that in the course of a decade 
or so, another such magnificent Bamboo forest could 
be produced ; but Nature, in some mysterious way, 
was equal to the occasion, and before I left India 
in 1877, the Bamboo zone of Malabar and My.<sore 
was clothed with another jungle, consisting of 
clumps approaching in size and grandeur those that 
perished in 1863. 
From the date of the seeding of the Bamboo, the 
clumps stood throughout the following monsoon 
leafless and dead, but intact; and it was not till 
nearly a year after that their complete destruction 
by fire began. When the dead and sapless clumps 
caught light, the whole country was filled with 
flame and smoke for weeks together ; loud reports 
were heard night and day without intermission, re- 
sulting from the pent-up gases within the hollow 
culms, and the whole Bamboo zone so picturesque 
and beautiful but a twelvemonth before was quickly 
reduced to a scene of desolation. The total destruc- 
tion of the clumps, however, was not accomplished 
in one season, many escaping the fires till the second, 
and some till the third. 
The young seedlings soon began to appear, but 
made but slow progress for several years. As time 
went on, the annual growth of culms waxed stouter 
and stouter, till at last a thick undergrowth of low 
Bamboo tufts covered the ground, which, in the 
fulness of time began to send up gigantic canes, 
till the forest was restored to its former strength 
and beauty. 
With reference to the period of time required for 
the maturation of Bambusa arundinacea, I was at 
some little trouble, while in India, to ascertain from 
the native tribes inhabiting the jungles of the district 
the approximate duration of its existence, and was 
told by several men, apparently about sixty years of 
age, living widely apart, that they remembered a 
similar phenomenon of the seeding of the whole of 
the Bamboos of the district when they were boys. 
From this I concluded that about fifty years was the 
limit to the life of this giant species of Bambusa. 
About three months before the flowering of the 
Bamboo, I had occasion to clear some 30 or 40 acres 
of land for the purpose of Coffee planting, the culms 
of the BamlDoo being cut close to the ground. I 
waited patiently, curious to know the result of such 
an operation. When the monsoon rains began, the 
huge stools left in the ground began at once to send 
up numerous small culms of from 8 to 10 feet in 
height, and furnished vidth laterals. On the cessa^^ 
tion of the rains these immediately flowered and, 
seeded, after which the old stools perished absolutely, 
so that the act of cutting down the original culms 
had only the effect of delaying, not frustrating, Na- 
tm-e in her efforts at reproduction. — J. Lowrie. 
— Gardeners' Chrcmicle. 
[The flowering must take place at shorter in- 
tervals than fifty years, for we found the bamboos 
in South Wynaad, flowering, seeding and dying in 
1877. We suspect much depends on seasonal influ- 
ences. 188'7 was a year of famine from drought.— 
Bd. T.A.] 
The Story of a coffee-plant as told by Dr. Kerr 
Cross possesses quite a romantic interest. Some 
ten years ago the authorities of Kew Gardens sent 
out a number of slips of the coffee-plant to Blantyre, 
in Central Africa. Only one Burvived the journey. 
This slip grew, bore seed proved itself wonderfully 
productive, and is now the progenitor of a million 
of plants growing on one estate alone, besides hun- 
dreds of thousands of others in that region. In 
three years the plants give a return. The quantity 
is also good, as shown by the fact that Shire 
coffee has recently been fetching wholesale 112s. 
a hundredweight in the London market.— Mail, 
Nov. 25th. 
