Is bamboo a tree or a grass? One article explains it clearly

Bamboo is a perennial plant of the grass family Poaceae, subfamily Bambusoideae, with woody stems. There are many species; some are short and grass-like, while others grow as tall as large trees and grow rapidly. They are distributed in tropical and subtropical regions, with the densest distribution in East Asia, Southeast Asia, and the islands of the Indian Ocean and Pacific Ocean. Let us take a look below at whether bamboo is a tree or a grass!

Is bamboo a tree or a grass?

Bamboo is a grass. Bamboo is a herbaceous plant, not a tree. The fundamental difference between woody plants and herbaceous plants is whether they have annual rings. Each year a tree grows, its stem adds a concentric ring, so when a tree is cut down, you can see annual rings one after another; the longer a tree has grown, the more annual rings it has. But when bamboo is sawn through, the inside is hollow, and there are no rings around it either. Therefore bamboo is a herbaceous plant and not a tree at all.

Does bamboo flower?

Bamboo does flower. Bamboo does not flower and bear fruit every year like most flowering plants, so some people mistakenly think bamboo does not flower. In fact, bamboo is a flowering plant, and after it reaches a certain age it too will flower and set seed. After flowering, bamboo dies because it does not have enough nutrients to continue growing. When it flowers, white flocculent material generally appears, and the flower spikes contain white filaments and a small grain-sized particle, popularly called bamboo rice. The impact of bamboo flowering on the ecology is enormous; for example, giant pandas may die because of a lack of food.

Common types of bamboo

1. Arrow bamboo: Arrow bamboo is also called Hua bamboo, arrow bamboo shoot, and so on. It is widely distributed from Foping on the southern slope of the Qinling Mountains through Nanping, Pingwu, Beichuan, and Baoxing on the northern edge of the Sichuan Basin, and finally to Leibo in southern Sichuan, forming an arc-shaped distribution in the mountains on the western edge of the Sichuan Basin, at the edges of coniferous forests at 2000-2800 m elevation. It is the main food source for giant pandas, and quite a few of its species have medium-sized culms, making it a valuable natural resource still awaiting development and use.

2. Ci bamboo: Ci bamboo is also called Ci bamboo, sweet Ci, wine-rice Ci, fishing Ci, clumping bamboo, hanging bamboo, mother-and-child bamboo, and so on. The main stem is 5-10 m tall, slender at the top, curved, bending and drooping like a fishing line, 3-6 cm thick. It is distributed in Shaanxi, Hubei, Hunan, Guangxi, Sichuan, Guizhou, Yunnan, and other places. It can be used to treat tuberculosis-related coughing of blood and to make bamboo weaving handicrafts, and it is also used to make bamboo weaving handicrafts.

3. Mottled bamboo: Mottled bamboo is also called Xiangfei bamboo. It is a form of Gui bamboo, a plant of the genus Phyllostachys in the grass family Poaceae, subfamily Bambusoideae, and is produced in Hunan, Henan, Jiangxi, Zhejiang, and other places. The culm is covered with brown cloud-patterned purple spots. The culm is 7-13 m tall and 3-10 cm in stem diameter. The culm has purple-brown patches and spots, and the branches also have purple-brown spots. Its difference from the original variety is that the culm has purple-brown patches and spots, and the branches also have purple-brown spots. It is a famous ornamental bamboo, and the culm is used for making handicrafts and as timber.

4. Moso bamboo: Moso bamboo is also called Nan bamboo, Mao bamboo, South bamboo, Jiangnan bamboo, cat bamboo, cat-head bamboo, Tang bamboo, Mengzong bamboo, and so on. It is a monopodial scattered evergreen tree-like bamboo plant of the genus Phyllostachys in the grass family Poaceae. The culm can reach more than 20 m tall and more than 20 cm thick. Old culms are hairless and gradually change from green to greenish yellow. The wall is about 1 cm thick, and the culm nodes are not obvious. The final branchlets have 2-4 leaves; the leaf ears are not obvious, and the ligule is raised. The leaves are relatively small and thin, lanceolate, with soft hairs on the lower surface along the base of the midrib. The flowering branches are spicate, without leaf ears. The spikelet has only 1 floret, the filaments are 4 cm long, and the stigma is feathery. The caryopsis is long-elliptic, with the persistent base of the style at the tip. The shoot period is in April, and flowering is from May to August.

5. Water bamboo: Water bamboo is also called solid bamboo, wood bamboo, Lizi bamboo, and so on. The culm can be about 6 m tall and up to 3 cm thick. Young culms have white powder and sparse short soft hairs. The internodes are up to 30 cm long, and the wall is 3-5 mm thick. The culm ring is relatively flat in thicker culms and at the same height as the sheath ring, while in thinner culms it is obviously raised and higher than the sheath ring, so it has good ornamental value. Water bamboo material has good toughness; cultivated water bamboo culms are thick and straight with relatively flat nodes, making them suitable for weaving various daily and production utensils. The famous Hunan Yiyang water bamboo mat is woven from this species as the material, and the shoots are used for food.