BAMBOO (Bambuseae)
Classified together with the grass family, the bamboo is one of the most useful plants found in South East Asia. South East Asia is home to about half of the world’s 700 or so species of bamboo. Like all grass, the bamboo’s stem (or culm) is cylindrical and hollow. The stem is divided into segments by the cross walls which separate the stem into self contained sections called joints or internodes. On the outside, narrow ridges known as nodes encircle the stems at regular intervals, marking the location of these cross walls. Unlike trees, bamboo grow by extending each joint upwards from it’s base. As each of the 20-40 individual joints may be growing at any one time, the bamboo can grow very fast, up to 30 cm within 24 hours.
Bamboo has already been widely used for all sorts of application since the olden days. Carbonized filaments made from bamboo fiber have been found to be well suited for special purpose electric lamps and Edison himself used bamboo filaments. In the early days of the gramophone, bamboo was used for needles. Bamboo joints are used to make inexpensive artificial limbs. In SE Asia, especially Thailand & Malaysia, bamboo is used as a container for cooking rice. The Malaysian festive delicacy ‘lemang’ is made this way while in Thailand, the Thai hill tribal dish Khaaw Laam is cooked in bamboo. Because bamboo resists attack by vinegar, it is fashioned into hoops for wooden barrels used for pickling fish and vegetables. In Japan, wine is kept in pots of green bamboo to improve its flavor. The natives of Malaysia used bamboo in such a wide variety of ways that it is almost impossible to describe them all. These include house frames, walls and floors, furniture and utensils, bridges and even weapons like the blowpipe and
crossbows.
When the bamboo shoot pushes up through the ground, it is filled with sugars to enable it to grow very rapidly. This food is attractive to wild animals and to man. Despite it being surrounded by spines and prickles and by layers of leaf sheath, it is harvested in large quantities by man. Some tender varieties only require ten minutes boiling for their preparation while for tougher varieties, it may be necessary to boil them for an hour after trimming, to discard the water and then boil again in fresh water for a further hour. The rather fibrous shoot is than eaten as a cooked vegetable or cold in salads. Bamboo shoots are even preserved either by drying or pickling in salt water.
What a lot of people are not aware of is that as a member of the grass family, the bamboo also produces edible grain. It is only because it is not a regular or reliable crop that men do not eat it too often. Often, bamboo grain has been treated like a famine crop. Leaves of bamboo are fed to livestock. Another source of food from the bamboo is the caterpillars that live in bamboo shoots: kabue and beetung are two caterpillars toasted and eaten in Northern Thailand.
Stem oil and sap, roots, leaves and mineral accumulations in bamboo are all used as medicine. The oil in bamboo stems is claimed to have curative properties. To take advantage of these, eggs are cooked slowly in a split joint so that it can absorb essential properties of the oil. When eaten, these eggs have been claimed to cure maladies like asthma. Sometimes in the bamboo stems, a hard white substance called tabashir can be found. Called kapur buloh (bamboo camphor) in Malaysia and tahi bambu in Java, tabashir has been used to treat various ailments ranging from coughs, asthma, fever and even illness of the lungs. Tabashir is composed mainly of silica, a mineral which is accumulated throughout the wood of older bamboo stems, improving their hardness. As a stone, it is white and pearly when wet, opaque when dry, but it is often sold blackened by the ash of the grove from which it was collected.
Do you know ….In the Central Visayas of the Philippines, there is a myth which associates bamboo with the origin of man. Sikalak and Sikabay, the first man and woman were purportedly born from a bamboo cane planted in the first garden by the god Kaptan. They were created to tend the garden. They fell in love when Kaptan was away on a journey. Sikabay the woman was worried that they should not marry as they were brother and sister, so they consulted the tuna fish, the doves and the earthquake. ‘The world must be peopled the earthquake said and so they
married
Bamboo has already been widely used for all sorts of application since the olden days. Carbonized filaments made from bamboo fiber have been found to be well suited for special purpose electric lamps and Edison himself used bamboo filaments. In the early days of the gramophone, bamboo was used for needles. Bamboo joints are used to make inexpensive artificial limbs. In SE Asia, especially Thailand & Malaysia, bamboo is used as a container for cooking rice. The Malaysian festive delicacy ‘lemang’ is made this way while in Thailand, the Thai hill tribal dish Khaaw Laam is cooked in bamboo. Because bamboo resists attack by vinegar, it is fashioned into hoops for wooden barrels used for pickling fish and vegetables. In Japan, wine is kept in pots of green bamboo to improve its flavor. The natives of Malaysia used bamboo in such a wide variety of ways that it is almost impossible to describe them all. These include house frames, walls and floors, furniture and utensils, bridges and even weapons like the blowpipe and
crossbows.
When the bamboo shoot pushes up through the ground, it is filled with sugars to enable it to grow very rapidly. This food is attractive to wild animals and to man. Despite it being surrounded by spines and prickles and by layers of leaf sheath, it is harvested in large quantities by man. Some tender varieties only require ten minutes boiling for their preparation while for tougher varieties, it may be necessary to boil them for an hour after trimming, to discard the water and then boil again in fresh water for a further hour. The rather fibrous shoot is than eaten as a cooked vegetable or cold in salads. Bamboo shoots are even preserved either by drying or pickling in salt water.
What a lot of people are not aware of is that as a member of the grass family, the bamboo also produces edible grain. It is only because it is not a regular or reliable crop that men do not eat it too often. Often, bamboo grain has been treated like a famine crop. Leaves of bamboo are fed to livestock. Another source of food from the bamboo is the caterpillars that live in bamboo shoots: kabue and beetung are two caterpillars toasted and eaten in Northern Thailand.
Stem oil and sap, roots, leaves and mineral accumulations in bamboo are all used as medicine. The oil in bamboo stems is claimed to have curative properties. To take advantage of these, eggs are cooked slowly in a split joint so that it can absorb essential properties of the oil. When eaten, these eggs have been claimed to cure maladies like asthma. Sometimes in the bamboo stems, a hard white substance called tabashir can be found. Called kapur buloh (bamboo camphor) in Malaysia and tahi bambu in Java, tabashir has been used to treat various ailments ranging from coughs, asthma, fever and even illness of the lungs. Tabashir is composed mainly of silica, a mineral which is accumulated throughout the wood of older bamboo stems, improving their hardness. As a stone, it is white and pearly when wet, opaque when dry, but it is often sold blackened by the ash of the grove from which it was collected.
Do you know ….In the Central Visayas of the Philippines, there is a myth which associates bamboo with the origin of man. Sikalak and Sikabay, the first man and woman were purportedly born from a bamboo cane planted in the first garden by the god Kaptan. They were created to tend the garden. They fell in love when Kaptan was away on a journey. Sikabay the woman was worried that they should not marry as they were brother and sister, so they consulted the tuna fish, the doves and the earthquake. ‘The world must be peopled the earthquake said and so they
married