August 20: Bamboo Day

Today is Bamboo Day so here are 10 facts about bamboo.

1. Bamboo is the fastest growing plant on the planet. There is a variety which grows 35 inches a day, or 1.5 inches an hour. It would be possible to sit and actually watch the stuff grow. Human beings, nasty, vindictive things that they are, have used this as a means of torture – tying an enemy onto a patch of growing bamboo so it grows through them.
2. Bamboo also grows very tall. It can reach up to 130 feet in height.
3. It's stronger than steel. In fact, it's one of the strongest materials on Earth, because it bends rather than breaks. In Hong Kong, scaffolding is made out of bamboo, not metal. It has been used to make Bicycle frames, and even trains (in Cambodia, some people made trains from bamboo when regular services stopped running). There's also a bridge in Kampong Cham made from bamboo. It gets washed away in the floods each year and is simply rebuilt again afterwards. Archaeologists believe that the reason they don't find remains of ancient stone tools in eastern Asia may be because the people there used bamboo to make tools instead.
4. It's also renewable. Once harvested, it starts growing again very quickly, and it's not long before it can be harvested again. It also produces 35% more Oxygen than hardwood trees and can absorb up to 12 tons of carbon dioxide per 2.5 acres in a single year. Bamboo also helps to prevent soil erosion and flooding, due to its extensive, strong root system. It's possibly the most environmentally friendly thing we can grow.
5. Bamboo plants don't flower very often. They only flower once in several decades. What's more, when it does flower, every single plant in that variety flowers at the same time the world over, in every location, regardless of the climate. Scientists have no idea why.
6. Bamboo has antibacterial properties which means its fibres can be used to make fabric which naturally kills germs. Ideal for bandages. It is also a natural deodoriser, another useful property for textiles.
7. Regular readers of this blog will know that Thomas Edison used Cotton to make filaments for his early light bulbs. Bamboo was another substance he used. A bamboo filament could last over 1,200 hours, making it the best substance to use. It was the bamboo filament which led to mass produced light bulbs.
8. Other things which might only exist thanks to bamboo are: firecrackers (because bamboo grows so fast, air pockets can get stuck in it so if it burned, it would explode with a loud bang); silk (in the west anyway, thanks to a couple of monks who smuggled silkworms out of China in hollow bamboo tubes); and Music (after Emperor Huang Ti asked Ling Lun to cut bamboo poles that would produce a sound like the call of a Phoenix bird).
9. You can even eat the stuff. It's not very nutritious but has little fat and few calories, and is rich in fibre. Bamboo shoots are a common food in Asia and can be used to bulk up food. Animals such as Pandas, Red Pandas and Madagascar's bamboo lemur eat nothing else. Mountain gorillas eat it for fun, because bamboo ferments in their stomachs and gets them drunk.
10. Ernest Hemingway's brother once made a bamboo raft and declared it an independent country called New Atlantis. It vanished during a storm in 1966.

NEW!!

Over the Rainbow

'We're not in Trinity anymore,' says Leonard Marx, quoting a line from an old Innovian  movie. The moon is different; the planes flying overhead are different. Nobody has any idea where they are or if it's possible to get home. 

In this strange new world, people from the highly technical Innovia and the less advanced Classica must co-operate in order to survive. In addition, travel through the inter-dimensional wormhole has given some people unusual and unexpected powers.

Innovia mourns the loss of its superhero, Power Blaster, last seen carrying a nuclear bomb to the upper atmosphere away from the inhabited Bird Island. They don't believe he could possibly have survived.  Power Blaster has survived, but is close to death and stranded in the new dimension. He is nursed back to health by a Classican woman, Elena. She has no idea who he is, only that she is falling in love with the handsome stranger.  

Shanna sets out to discover what happened to Nathan Tate, who didn't return from his hiking holiday, not knowing her life is about to be turned inside out and upside down. 

Meanwhile, Desi Troyes, the man responsible for the catastrophe, is at large on the new world, plotting how he can transfer his plans for world domination to the planet he now finds himself on - Earth. 

Available from Amazon and Amazon Kindle