212 
LOCK: THE GROWTH 
repetition of some of these experiments made under the 
more favourable and uniform conditions of climate obtain¬ 
ing in many parts of the tropics may not lead to interesting 
results, possibly even indicating the necessity for a revision 
of some of the generalizations based upon those earlier 
It appeared therefore to be worth while to make a few 
observations upon growth under natural conditions such as 
exist in a tropical country. And for a preliminary study of 
the growth of internodes few plants are so well adapted in 
many ways as the rapidly growing giant bamboo. Large 
clumps of Dendrocalamus giganteus constitute a striking 
feature in the Royal Botanic Gardens at Peradeniya, and it 
was upon members of this species that the majority of the 
measurements recorded in the following pages were made. 
Sachs has indeed long ago pointed outf the disadvan¬ 
tages of using large and rapidly growing plants for 
observations upon the physiology of growth, one of the 
chief being the impossibility of subjecting such plants to 
experimental conditions. On the other hand by the use of 
large plants certain factors of error may be avoided. For 
instance the effect of strain produced by the attachment of 
the growing region to a recording apparatus can be done 
away with, if the growth is sufficiently rapid for a simpler 
method of observation to be used. 
Perhaps the most striking fact which the observations 
here recorded have brought to light is the very large effect 
produced upon the growth of young culms of Dendrocalamus 
by relatively small changes in the conditions of moisture. 
The giant bamboo is no doubt a very highly specialized 
plant, and its behaviour may therefore be to some extent 
exceptional. Indeed the small number of plants upon which 
observations of the rate of growth have hitherto been made 
seems to warrant the suggestion that in other specific cases. 
17‘ l . 1V ? li8 ’/ l0Wering Plante “d Ferns, 2nd Edition, 1 
1 d Inst - i* Wurzburg Heft II., p. 100, 1! 
