Bamboo is a grass.

Bamboo is a very fast growing form of a woody-stemmed grass. Giant bamboos are the largest members of the grass family. There are about 1439 known species of bamboo with new species identified often.Bamboos are some of the fastest-growing plants in the world, due to a unique rhizome-dependent system. Certain species of bamboo can grow 35 inches within a 24-hour period.

The hollow central stem with its many joints is called the culm. Bamboo has rhizomes, large underground stems that spread out rapidly through the soil. The result is a dense, interlocking web of fibers that holds topsoil firmly in place. It is an excellent soil erosion inhibitor.The bamboo plant’s root system creates an effective watershed, stitching the soil together along fragile river banks, deforested areas and in places prone to mudslides. It also greatly reduces rain run-off.

Bamboo is considered to be one of the most useful plants in the world.

Bamboo can be utilized as a building material for scaffolding, bridges and houses. Bamboo, like true wood, is a natural composite material with a high strength-to-weight ratio useful for structures. Bamboo has a higher compressive strength than wood, brick or concrete and a tensile strength that rivals steel. The tensile strength of plated bamboo cables is as strong as or stronger than a steel cable of the same size. Hemp rope loses 20% of its strength when wet while bamboo cables increase in strength by as much as 20% when wet.

Bamboo is used to make paper, cloth, yarn and clothing, basketry, hats, and is biodegradable.

According to research funded by the European Commission, bamboo is effective in phytoremediating water. Phytoremediation processes use natural materials to eat up pollutants, making them distinct from processes that capture contaminants and dispose of them elsewhere. The system looks like nothing more than a bamboo plantation, easily blending in with the surrounding landscape. The system is designed to treat ‘grey water’ – wastewater that does not contain sewage or toxic chemicals.

Bamboo is a natural greywater filter. Greywater systems are more and more popular in drought stricken areas.

Bamboo is strong

Bamboo’s circular structure makes it stronger than a similar weight of other woods, and for centuries it has been used as a construction material for houses, flooring and furniture. Because it grows quickly and in poor soils, without much care or chemicals, it is touted as a “green” wood and earns LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certification points for sustainable building.
Bamboo is one of the strongest building materials with a tensile strength of 28,000 psi. To help give you an idea how much this is, mild steel measures 23,000 psi.

In Hiroshima, Japan the only plant to survive the radiation of the 1945 atomic bomb was a bamboo. The incinerating heat destroyed trees and other plant life. Everything except one bamboo grove was destroyed. The grove has since been removed, but culms from the grove are preserved in a museum in Hiroshima.

Bamboo is food

Bamboo shoots are consumed in many Asian countries such as China, Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Thailand, Philippines, Indonesia, Nepal, and India. One can find evidence in old Chinese literature dating back to the Tang dynasty (618 AD- 907 AD), about the benefits of eating bamboo shoots. This was perhaps the first written record about bamboo shoots in human history. Another important scripture dating back to the Ming dynasty (1368 AD to 1644 AD) also mentioned the medicinal and other benefits of bamboo shoots. In Japan, they are considered as the “King of Forest Vegetables”.

110 varieteies are recorded to have edible shoots. Bamboo shoots may contain significant, potentially very toxic amounts of cyanogenic glycosides. The cyanogenic glycoside in bamboo is in fact taxiphyllin. Taxiphyllin is unusual amongst other similar compounds in the sense that it degrades readily in boiling water. Boiling bamboo shoots or cooking bamboo shoots should remove any problem.

Bamboo is a part of the world’s creation myths and religions

Several cultures (Philippine, Malaysia, Japanese, Polynesian, South American) believe humanity emerged from a bamboo stem.

In Philippine mythology, one of the more famous creation accounts tells of the first man, Malakás (“Strong”), and the first woman, Maganda (“Beautiful”), each emerged from one half of a split bamboo stem on an island formed after the battle between Sky and Ocean.

In Malaysia, a similar story includes a man who dreams of a beautiful woman while sleeping under a bamboo plant; he wakes up and breaks the bamboo stem, discovering the woman inside.

The Japanese folktale “Tale of the Bamboo Cutter” (Taketori Monogatari) tells of a princess from the Moon emerging from a shining bamboo section.

Hawaiian bamboo (‘ohe) is a kinolau or body form of the Polynesian creator god Kāne.

In a Chinese legend, the Emperor Yao gave two of his daughters to the future Emperor Shun as a test for his potential to rule. Shun passed the test of being able to run his household with the two emperor’s daughters as wives, and thus Yao made Shun his successor, bypassing his unworthy son. After Shun’s death, the tears of his two bereaved wives fell upon the bamboos growing there explains the origin of spotted bamboo. The two women later became goddesses Xiangshuishen after drowning themselves in the Xiang River.

In Theravada Buddhism, the 12th Sakyamuni was enlightened under a clump of thorny bamboo (Bambusa blumeana). Then bamboo became one of the most important plant in Buddhism.

Vihara or pure abode was firstly recorded to be inside bamboo forest. Later bamboo becomes one of the significant ornamental plant in Buddhism temples. There are several temples in China named after bamboo, such as Qiongzhuea Temple in Kunming. Bamboo species are named after Buddha too, such as Buddha belly bamboo (Bambusa ventricosa), Mercy Buddha bamboo (Bambusa multiplex var. riviereorum), arhat bamboo (Phyllostachys aurea), etc.