Bamboo Facts

ANNUALLY RENEWABLE - Bamboo is the fastest growing, most versatile woody plant in the world. It can grow up to a whole foot a day!
REVERSES GLOBAL WARMING - Incredible and true, bamboo consumes carbon dioxide FOUR times faster than any other plant! Bamboo plantations are large factories for photosynthesis which reduces greenhouse gases. Bamboo plants absorb about 5 times the amount of carbon dioxide (a primary greenhouse gas) and produces about 35% more oxygen than an equivalent stand of trees.
PLENTIFUL: There are over 1500 species of bamboo in the world.
PROVIDES SAFE HOUSING - Over 1 billion people in the world live in bamboo houses. In most cases, bamboo buildings have proven to be earthquake proof.
HARDY: Bamboo was the first plant life to return after the atomic bombings in Japan.
NUTRITION FOR HUMANS AND ANIMALS - Bamboo contains Germanium which is known to reverse the aging process in cells.
DID YOU KNOW.. Thomas Edison used bamboo filaments in his first light bulbs, and one of those bulbs is STILL burning today at the Smithsonian in Washington D.C.
ANCIENT HEALING - Bamboo has been used in Indian Ayurvedic medicine for centuries.
STRONGER THAN STEEL - Bamboo has a tensile strength of 28,000 per square inch vs. 23,000 for steel.
GROWING BAMBOO... improves soil quality and helps rebuild eroded soil. The extensive root system of bamboo holds soil together, prevents soil erosion, and retains water in the watershed.
BAMBOO GROWS NATURALLY... without the need for agricultural tending and large diesel exhaust-spewing tractors to plant seeds and cultivate the soil.

Bamboo Is:

The fastest growing plant on this planet
A critical element in the balance of oxygen and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere
A viable replacement for wood
An enduring natural resource
Versatile with a short growth cycle
A critical element of the economy
An essential structural material in earthquake architecture
A renewable resource for agroforestry production.
A natural controllable barrier
An ancient medicine
Integrally involved in culture and the arts

BAMBOO is found in tropical (a few species aresubtropical) areas around the world. Seeing the grass in our yards, it's hard to believe that bamboo is also a grass. The stems, called culms for BAMBOO, of some species can reach to over 100 feet high. They rarely flower and therefore seeds are almost never available.

However, culms can grow up to full height in one season (in some species growing one foot each day) and each rhizome (vegetative reproduction shoots that grow underground laterally and send up new culms) grows a new plant. Because of this, some BAMBOO tends to be intensively invasive and difficult to get rid of. Once established in the landscape, all the rhizomes must be dug up before the plant is eradicated.

BAMBOO has been extremely valuable to mankind. It has been used as a food source for humans and for the Giant Panda of China; wood for furniture, flooring, musical instruments, etc.; for decorative artwork carvings; hollowed into vases, tubes, and pipes; flattened into paper; honed into knitting needles; and the fibers made into yarn and clothes.

Sourced from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bamboo

Humans & Bamboo

A suspension bridge on the river in China is 250 yard long, 9 foot wide and rests entirely on bamboo cables fastened over the water. It doesn't have a single nail or piece of iron in it.
Used in ladders, scaffolding or fencing, bamboo is twice as stable as oak, and harder than walnut and teak.
Bamboo clothing (both mechanically and chemically manufactured) is 100% biodegradable and can be completely decomposed in the soil by micro-organisms and sunlight without decomposing into any pollutants such as methane gas which is commonly produced as a by-product of decomposition in landfills and dumps.