Is bamboo a tree or a grass? Botanical classification reveals the answer
Bamboo is a perennial plant of the subfamily Bambusoideae in the grass family Poaceae, with woody stems. There are many species; some are low and grass-like, while others grow as tall as large trees and grow rapidly. It is 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 see ring after ring of annual rings, and 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. So bamboo is a herbaceous plant and not a tree at all.
Does bamboo flower?
Bamboo does flower. Bamboo does not flower and 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 a certain number of years 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 fluffy 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 from lack of food.
Common types of bamboo
1. Arrow bamboo: Arrow bamboo is also called slide bamboo, arrow bamboo shoot, etc. It is widely distributed from Foping on the southern slope of the Qinling Mountains through Nanping, Pingwu, Beichuan, and Baoxing on the northern border of the Sichuan Basin, and finally to Leibo in southern Sichuan, forming an arc along the western edge of the Sichuan Basin, at elevations of 2000-2800 m at the edge of coniferous forests. It is the main food source for giant pandas, and quite a few of its types 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, etc. Its main stem is 5-10 m tall, slender at the top, arc-shaped, bending and drooping like a fishing line, and 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 injury with blood vomiting and to make woven bamboo handicrafts, and it is also used to make woven bamboo handicrafts.
3. Spotted bamboo: Spotted bamboo is also called Xiangfei bamboo. It is a form of Gui bamboo, a plant of the genus Phyllostachys in the subfamily Bambusoideae of the grass family Poaceae, and is produced in Hunan, Henan, Jiangxi, Zhejiang, and other places. The culms are covered with brown cloud-patterned purple spots. The culms are 7-13 m tall and 3-10 cm in diameter. The culms have purple-brown patches and spots, and the branches also have purple-brown spots. Its difference from the original variety is that the culms have purple-brown patches and spots, and the branches also have purple-brown spots. It is a famous ornamental bamboo, and the culms are 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, etc. It is a monopodial scattered evergreen tree-like bamboo plant of the genus Phyllostachys in the grass family Poaceae. The culms 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, with walls about 1 cm thick. The culm rings are not obvious. The final branchlets have 2-4 leaves. The leaf ears are not obvious, and the ligule is raised. The leaf blades are rather 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 spikelets have only 1 floret. The filaments are 4 cm long, and the stigmas are feathery. The caryopsis is long-elliptical, 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, etc. The culms can be about 6 m tall and up to 3 cm thick. Young culms have a white bloom and sparsely grow short soft hairs. The internodes are up to 30 cm long, and the walls are 3-5 mm thick. The culm rings are relatively flat in thicker culms, at the same height as the sheath rings, while in thinner culms they are obviously raised and higher than the sheath rings, so it has good ornamental value. Water bamboo material has good toughness. Cultivated water bamboo culms are thick and straight, with relatively flat nodes, and are suitable for weaving various household 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.