Bamboo - Myths, Culture and Uses

Bamboo plays a major part in many East Asian cultures, although it also grows in Africa, the United States, South America and Australia.

There are many myths around the importance that bamboo played in the creation of humankind. For instance, in the Andaman Islands, people believe humanity came from a bamboo stem. In the Philippines, mythology tells the story of the first man, called Malakás ('Strong'), and the first woman, Maganda ('Beautiful'), who each came out of one half of a broken bamboo stem on an island formed after a battle between Sky and Ocean.

Bamboo is an important part of the culture of Vietnam too. It is a symbol of the country and the Vietnamese soul: open, hard-working, flexible and optimistic.

However, it is in China where bamboo has become an essential part of everyday life and thinking. There, the bamboo, plum blossom, orchid and chrysanthemum are called the Four Gentlemen. Bamboo, one of the 'four gentlemen', is seen as a role model for young men because it has the characteristics of perseverance and honesty, as well as simplicity and elegance.

Ancient Chinese poets wrote about bamboo to say what a true gentleman should be like. Bai Juyi, who lived from 772 to 846, for example, thought a man did not need to be physically strong, but he must stick to his aims, never giving up what he believed in. He should also be open to new ideas and feelings, just like the bamboo is hollow inside, so his heart should not be too proud to accept everything good.

Bamboo is not only the symbol of a gentleman, but also has an important role in Buddhism. In the first century, this philosophy arrived in China. Buddhism does not allow its believers to harm animals, so meat, eggs and fish are forbidden in their diet. The delicious, young bamboo shoot took their place. Ever since, it has been a traditional dish on the Chinese dinner table, especially in the south.

But China is not the only country where bamboo is part of a popular meal. In Nepal and the north-eastern states of India, bamboo shoots are spiced with turmeric and served as a curry with other vegetables, especially potatoes. In Indonesia, the plant is cooked in coconut milk, while it can also be made into a soft drink or an alcoholic one.

Of course, it's not only people that enjoy eating bamboo, but many animals too, most famously the giant panda, not to mention the rats that eat its fruit and flowers. In Africa, mountain gorillas not only eat it but drink the sap when it is alcoholic.

It is, perhaps, surprising that both people and animals eat so much bamboo because it contains a toxin that turns into cyanide in the intestines. Some animals have adapted to this, so that the golden bamboo lemur can eat many times the quantity that would kill an adult man. And, as if all that were not enough, bamboo has long been used to make paper too!

But what is bamboo? Why is it so different from other plants? In fact, it's a kind of grass. Giant bamboos are its largest members and are one of the fastest-growing plants in the world, with some plants increasing their height by a metre in just twenty-four hours (although it's more usual for them to grow between three and ten centimetres in that time). Some types can grow to thirty metres tall, while others only reach ten or fifteen centimetres. There are, in fact, about 1,450 species of bamboo growing on every continent except Europe. They can survive at temperatures as cold as -30° Centigrade and, of course, do very well in hot, wet climates too.

Most bamboo species flower only very occasionally. Many flower once every 60 to 120 years. Then all the plants in a particular species will flower for several years, no matter where they are in the world, whether in the icy south of Chile or the hot and humid jungles of Thailand. This strange phenomenon where its flowering does not depend on its environment, suggests a sort of internal 'alarm clock' in the plant cells which directs the plant to transfer its energy to flowering and away from growth. But how and why this happens are mysteries.

One way to explain mass flowering is that the bamboo ensures its survival by producing so much fruit that its predators – rats – simply cannot eat it all. What's more, because the time between the seasons when it flowers is so much longer than the lifespan of the rats, bamboos can reduce their populations by starving them to death during the period when the bamboo doesn't flower.

Another theory argues that periodic flowering followed by the deaths of all the adult bamboo plants has evolved as a way to allow young plants to grow, without any competition from older and stronger plants. The dead plants create a lot of wood and become a target for lightning strikes, causing huge fires that leave the ground empty and ready for new bamboo seeds to grow.

However, neither of these ideas really explains the very strange circumstances of the bamboo flowering. Why is the period between flowering seasons ten times longer than the lifespan of the rats that eat the flowers? And why would the bamboo be the only plant to depend on lightning to ensure its survival? Lightning is, anyway, not very dependable. Most forest fires are, in fact, caused by people.

Whatever the answer may be to this puzzle, the mass fruiting has terrible economic and ecological results. The huge increase in fruit usually causes a dramatic rise in the rat populations, which spread disease and starvation among farmers.

There are many examples of this but one of the worst is in the subcontinent, when the bamboo flowers every thirty to thirty-five years. The death of the bamboos after they flower means the local people lose their building material, and the sudden increase in bamboo fruit leads to the rapid growth of the rat population. The animals eat not just the bamboo fruit but the crops in the fields and the food stored in warehouses. They also carry dangerous diseases, like typhus, typhoid and even plague.