WONDERFUL BAMBOO

Evening Star, Issue 19550, 7 May 1927, Page 18

WONDERFUL BAMBOO

WORLD'S I3CST USEFUL PUIT Throughout the East, South Amor ica, and the West Indies almost the sole material out of which the poor build and furnish their houses, make their chairs, beds, tables, couches, and stools, is man’s best friend among plants—the wonderful bamboo. The schoolboy, the clerk, and the draughtsman ail use it as a ruler or straightedge; the schoolmaster inflicts his punishment with it—and so does the Chinese mandarin, or magistrate. Writing paper is made from it, and its stems, according to their size, are used for penholders and pencil-cases, cigarette holders, umbrellas, walking sticks, ladders, and ships’ masts. Fans of exquisite beauty, dainty little cages for birds, stouter ones for animals, and even prison cages for malefactors, are all made from the accommodating plant, and so are baskets of all kinds, fish creels, and fishing rods; the young roots are used as foods, cooked like asparagus in milk, and in the making of comfits and pickles; they are also carved into statuettes, ornaments, and all manner of grotesque figures of men, beasts, birds, and fisbes. The stems can be cut into fine strips and made up into mats, ropes, and sails of boats; the leaves aro used to thatch roofs, make hats, mats, sacks, and clothing. As if to assist man in the making of ladders, erecting scaffolding, building bridges, and other work of a similar nature, certain species even grow a square stem for him instead of the usual round one. It grows anything from few feet to a hundred in length, and the long, straight reeds make excellent water pipes, being conveniently hollowed by Nature, as though for the purpose. Certain kinds, growing in arid situations, carry their own supply of moisture in the form of a fluid of pleasant flavor, borne within the stem, and being hardly distinguishable from spring water. The seeds of other sorts are used ns a food, cooked like rice, and for making a kind of beer. When a Chinaman dies on his bamboo bed he can be carried to the grave on a bamboo bier, slung with bamboo ropes from bamboo poles, lowered into a grave which has been dug with a spade with a bamboo handle, and have a bamboo “ tombstone ” erected over him. No wonder there is a saying in the East that “ China would not he China without the bamboo.”