Bamboo the Plant

Spreading
The main spreading area for bamboo are the Tropics. Only a view types are expanded into subtropical or temperate zones due to their life tenacity. India, Burma and the asiatic archipelago is possible to be the original home of bamboo, because 65 % of all types are to be found their. In North America only one type of bamboo is domestic (Mc Clure 1953) and none in Europe.
1855 a 6 ha large bamboo copse has artificially been planted in Generargues (Prafrance).

Climatic Conditions
The most types of bamboo propser at a temperatures from 8,8°C up to 36°C. The Moso and Ma bamboo plants in Japan even stand temperatures up to -10°C. Chusquea aristata is growing at the aquator up to the snow line, and in the Himalaja bamboo plants are to be found in a height of up to 3600m.
Bamboo even survived the nuclear bombs of Hiroschima and Nagasaki and the ground contaminated afterwords; among the first green plants at the edge of the bomb craters bamboo sprouts were found.

Soil Conditions
Bamboo plants predominately are standing on sandy loam up to clay soils. They prefer well drained soils, but even grow on wet to boggy soils. They do not tolerate saline soils.

Growth
The growth conditions of the bamboo plants are a combination of grass, broad-leafed tree and palm tree.
Like grass they have the tubular structure of the culms, lance shaped bracts and panicle shaped blossoms and from an underground rhizome they build far-creeping tillers with compact to loose shrubs (eyries). Different to grasses are the many-year old lifetime, the ramification and the lignification. Like the broad-leafed tree, every year they increase their crown with new arms and every year discard their leaves. 

The growing-up can be compared with the one of a treepalm: it gets out of the soil with its definitive volume but without a later thickening like normally broad-leafed trees and conifers do.

Rhizome
Bamboo has persistent roots = rhizomes. Once a seed has borne a primary rhizome, the differentiated rhizome systems begin to build up. Its thickness / length growth increases annually. Only from twelve and more years on, the rhizomes can bring up culms in their full thickness and height. According to the remification modus, there are monpodiale and sympodiale rhizomes. For this, we don't want to go into details (a too long story.) 

Length Growth
First the culms are standing as small buds on the rhizome. There they grow for many years until they burst out of the soil as short, thick, cone-shaped sprout covered by sharp-edged leafes. From now on the bamboo sprout developes to a culm with enormous speed; in 20 to 30 days, at the latest after one year, the full size has been reached. The culms become only 15-30 cm long depending on the specie and have a 2,5cm diameter. With favourable conditions, others with a diameter of 30cm become 40m high. The average culm length is 8-15m with a diameter of 5-12cm and 10mm wall thickness. Even big culms can finish their growth within 40 days. The average length growth is about 25cm a day. More than 90cm a day are rar exceptions. The diameter of the culm remains the same as long as it exists. Therefore, the age of the cane cannot be determined according to the thickness. The age will be estimated according to the sound and the appearance of the surface.