Bamboo Trees & Plants Article

In some coastal regions of Africa the people make their houses out of bamboo. The Duala people of Cameroon live in these places. At these and many other pars of Africa bamboo trees are used to make houses. Bamboo is a group of woody, perennial evergreen plants. Bamboo forms the largest members of the grass family. There are about 1000 species of bamboo plants as proposed in botanical literature and they can be found anywhere between the cold mountains to the hot tropical regions. They grow all over East Asia, through to northern Australia and in 5^th west to India and the Himalayas. They also grow in Sub Saharan Africa and in North and South America and United States and Argentina and Chile. There isn’t any native bamboo in areas of Europe, North Africa, western Asia, Canada, most of Australia and Antarctica. 

In China bamboo is a symbol of longevity and in India bamboo is a symbol of friendship. Some of the types of this grass family grow to a height of 100 meters. New shoots of the bamboo plants can grow over 1 meter per day. They are of great economic and cultural significance in East Asia and South East Asia. Bamboo is widely used in gardens, as building materials and as a food source. if you have ever been to China you will have witnessed scaffolding erected completely out of bamboo trees.

In parts of Asia they are used to build complete houses. Bamboo is also used to make cups, utensils and other cooking items. I learned in the hill tribes of Thailand that one of the best ways to cook rice over a fire in the wilderness is to cut a hole on the side of a bamboo plant, then put water and rice in the hole and tie off with a leaf. The rice cooks in no time and the bamboo withstands the heat of the fire.

Young shoots of several species of bamboo are important vegetables of the daily diet among many groups of peoples in many parts of China. It has been said that the young grasses of many species of bamboo trees provide the use of many things. Bamboo in their diet is a valuable source of certain enzymes. Bamboo is used to make many foods in the east. Bamboo is also extensively used in paper making. They are used in the manufacture of paper in the Chittagong Hill tracts. There are paper making factories at Khulna in Bangladesh and in Chandraghona and Paksey. Bamboo is also used to make musical instruments and in Africa it is used to make blowguns which can be 18 inches to more than 23 feet long.

Bamboo plants are extensively used in interior decoration, you can accent any space using artificial bamboo plants.