Small secrets of bamboo

In China, bamboo is called " friend of the people ". In India, bamboo is "the wood of the poor ". For the 2 billion inhabitants on this planet, bamboo is also a source of food and construction materials.

Discover the mystery of bamboo

Indians call bamboo mambu , Chinese people call it chu , while in Japan bamboo is called take . Worldwide, there are 1,300 types of bamboo mainly concentrated in South America and Asia, of which Southeast Asia accounts for more than 600 types.

Even in the icy Himalayas, there are bamboo species growing on the mountainside at a height of 4,000m. Although bamboo is used extensively in Oceania, South America and Africa, Asia is the cradle of bamboo. Its origin may be from India, Myanmar and the Indonesian archipelago. It was discovered in China that bamboo mats and baskets date back to 3,300 - 2,800 years ago.

According to a suggestion about how to protect the environment, planting a bamboo fence will help absorb more CO2 than the gas they release and should not limit their growth process. Bamboo grows very well, can grow 30cm / day or more depending on variety. To reach a height of 35m, bamboo has ' programmed ' a vertical, vertical development strategy.

Beneath the soil layer, bamboo roots accumulate the necessary reserves for bamboo shoots to grow. In contrast to the tree trunk growing in diameter, bamboo grows like an antenna tree extending out, the bamboos turn one after another. Bamboo flowers (about 10, 50 or 100 years later) are rare, but it is very harmful because it exhausts the trunk and signals that bamboo will die.

The ideal time to harvest bamboo is about 3 years or more, because then bamboo has reached its durability. In many places in Asia, bamboo is about 12 meters high and the villagers split it into thin slices. To make dishes, they bend thin bamboo slices in a spiral and paste with a glue taken from the trunk of a tree . At the processing facilities, people use a machine to cut bamboo stems into slices of about 8mm thick, crushed and bleached in boiling water, then treated with fungicides.

According to the current trend, bamboo is a smart , aesthetic and very environmental material. Ekobo, a French company with a manufacturing facility in Vietnam has been processing bamboo bowls, bowls and utensils. Even the Play Engine has put this ' giant grass ' into keyboards, monitors and computer mice. In Tokyo, female nurses wear bamboo blouses because they contain a natural and very cool antimicrobial agent.

Bamboo brings light

To build his first electric light bulb in 1878, Thomas Edison had to solve the problem of filament. He had to find a material that was durable enough to generate electricity without burning. So Edison tried 1,600 types, including hair, cotton, flax and even elephant hair. After about a thousand experiments, he finally chose a Japanese bamboo.

Bamboo - from exploitation to processing stages.(AQ photo)

Do not leave anything from bamboo

Sales of bamboo and its products are estimated at 8 billion euros / year. Everything from bamboo has its uses.

1. Bamboo: scaffolding, pile, toothpick, skewer stick.
2. Middle body: knit products, curtains, carpets, mats, handicraft goods.
3. Below: table, chair, partition
4. Root: fuel.
5.La: medicine, juice, beverage, food for ruminants and rabbits.
6. Branches: brooms and clothes.
7. Shoots: food.
8. Good: handicraft goods.

Tre followed the Silk Road

Bamboo appears on the earth 30 - 40 million years ago, according to botanists estimates. Chinese people were the first to use bamboo as a writing platform to engrave their history. After being replaced by silk, bamboo reappeared in the 8th century as a raw material to produce pulp. Bamboo was present in Europe around 550. From China, monks secretly entered Constantinople silkworm larvae hidden in bamboo tubes.

By the 19th century, the silk importers brought bamboo samples to give gifts to wealthy customers or royalties. So bamboo becomes a ornamental tree. At first, only some bamboo varieties could resist the European climate, such as Phyllostachys. One of Europe's oldest and richest bamboo forests is located in Anduze, Gars region (France). This bamboo forest was born in 1856 and currently concentrates to 300 species.