Since a recent topic on this blog has been wood, a word or two about Bamboo.

We will, at some point, get into the remarkable utility and beauty of products made from this wood, but this is about the tree.

Bamboo is sustainable and replaceable; its shoots are a staple of Chinese cooking and the stalks are greatly adored by Pandas.  Bamboo fibers can be milled into baby-soft textiles which, turned into sheets, towels, placemats, and clothing, are finding a growing market.  

Bamboo absorbs four times as much carbon dioxide as trees and releases 35 percent more oxygen.  The plant also manufactures its own antibacterial compounds so doesn't require pesticides.

There are species of bamboo that range from tiny grasses to trees that will grow 70 feet in a single season, and when cultivated for lumber bamboo has nearly twice the yield per acre as pine.

All and all they are admirable plants.

But there is a problem. 


There are two types of bamboo growth (not to be confused with the hundreds of species and varieties), spreading and clumping.  The home gardener is always advised to work with the clumping kind which, when planted stays put.  Running bamboo, on the other hand, has a name that vastly understates the plant's abilities.

There are gardeners who swear that their feet cannot move fast enough to get out of the way of spreading bamboo.  Once planted, it will quickly overtake your yard, and your neighbor's yard, and his neighbors' yards as it spreads by rhizomes.  So one would think, with its quick growth and rapid spread Bamboo would be plentiful in every appropriate climate.  But the problem is bamboo has a lousy record of reproduction.

In spite of its vigorous pattern of growth, bamboo flowers create seed only once or twice a century and the plants do not take well to division - both the new and the donor plant frequently die.  Division, however, was the accepted method for culturing clumping bamboo and the division, growth, and replanting cycle lasted three to five years.

Now, however, a Seattle garden owner has found a way to culture non-invasive bamboo cuttings which allows her to sell plants to wholesalers with confidence they will survive and thrive.

Jackie Heinricher found, after nearly a decade of experiments, that she could sterilize cuttings with bleach and place them in test tubes filled with a broth of vitamins, plant hormones, inorganic salts, and a seaweed derivative.  Once the roots sprout the cuttings are planted in soil and then raised in greenhouses until they are of sufficient size to be sold by the tray full to wholesale garden centers.  

Ms. Heinricher's company, Boo-Shoots, is currently working to produce and market 42 different types of bamboo.   Boo-Shoots shipped 150,000 plants in 2007 and were aiming at 250,000 in the year just ended.

This has enormous implications for the homeowner and for the environment. 

It may soon be feasible to replace the Kentucky Blue in your front yard with a tiny variety of bamboo that can be mowed.  Large scale commercial bamboo "timber" farms in the U.S. would accelerate the growth and bring down the price of bamboo flooring, furniture, carpet and trim and home gardeners will be able to more easily factor bamboo into landscape design.

And someday it may be commonplace for highway medians and local parks to be planted with stands of bamboo - eliminating mowing and weeding while scrubbing the emission-filled air of CO2 while replacing it with oxygen.