What is Bamboo?

Bamboo is a type of plant that grows in eastern Asian provinces and on islands in the Pacific. The plant grows to be very tall, very strong, and has a history of being useful as a building material for all sorts of different things. For one, people used to build huts/houses out of bamboo years ago. It is such a strong material that it was able to withstand the elements better than most materials in the area.

Technically, bamboo is a perennial evergreen. There are some species that are not, but these are only usually found in a few temperate climates around the world. The larges bamboo trees are known as Gian bamboos, and the are actually the largest member of the grass family of plants. The stems of the plants are hollow, and grow at a very fast rate. Some bamboo plants grow up to 60 centimeters per day, depending on the soil and other factors.

In East and Southeast Asia, bamboo is still a widely used material that people handle every day. It is a food source, a building product, and a highly valuable raw material for commerce. There are many different species of bamboo, about 1,500 and counting!

In the Western world, bamboo is more popular today than it has ever been, but not so much for building houses or huts. Nowadays, it is mostly used for things like furniture, bamboo floor mats, bamboo bath rugs and mats, decorations, bamboo clothing, and other fabrics.

Bamboo is a pretty easy to obtain material in some parts of the world, but to buy it in the United States, you almost always have to get it imported, which can be a considerable expense. Still, its usefulness as a building material can really offset this cost, depending on what you are going to be doing with it.