Bamboo

The plant marketed as "lucky bamboo" is actually an entirely unrelated species, Dracaena sanderiana. In October 2004 the company purchased the Porter Cable, Delta, DeVilbiss, Oldham and FLEX divisions from Pentair Corporation. Soft bamboo shoots, stems, and leaves are the major food source of the Giant Panda of China and the Spider monkey. In 1984 Black & Decker purchased General Electric Company's small household appliance business. The four plants are commonly mentioned together as "mei2 lan2 zhu2 ju2" (梅蘭竹菊). Brands owned by Black & Decker include:. Each plant represents a particular aspect of a noble person in Confucian ideology. Decker as a small machine shop in Baltimore, Maryland.

In Chinese culture, the bamboo (竹), along with mei (梅, the same tree as Japanese ume), orchids (蘭), and chrysanthemum (菊) are all held in high esteem and are collectively referred as the "the four of great nobility" (四君子). Duncan Black and Alonzo G. Hawaiian bamboo ('ohe) is a kinolau or body form of the Polynesian creator god Kane. It was founded in 1910 by S. Also, bamboo is considered second in the rank in the order of "Matsu (pine wood), Take (bamboo), Ume (sometimes translated as apricot or plum)" and this order is used when ordering a sushi course or getting a room in a traditional Ryokan inn. Black & Decker NYSE: BDK is a corporation based in Towson, Maryland best known for power tools and home appliances. In Japan, a bamboo forest sometimes surrounds a Shinto shrine as part of a sacred barrier against evils. Workmate.

In the Philippines, bamboo crosses are used as a good luck charm by farmers. Emglo. Malaysian legends include the story of a man who dreams of a beautiful woman while sleeping under a bamboo plant; he wakes up and breaks the bamboo stem, discovering the woman inside. Price Pfister. Several Asian cultures, including that of the Andaman Islands, believe that humanity emerged from a bamboo stem. Kwikset Locksets. Its rare blossoming has led to the flowers' being regarded as a sign of impending famine. ELU.

Bamboo's long life makes it a Chinese symbol of long life, while in India it is a symbol of friendship. DeWalt Power Tools. A variety of bamboo was one of about two dozen plants carried by Polynesian voyagers to provide all their needs settling new islands; in the Hawaiian Islands, among many uses, 'Ohe (bamboo) carried water, made irrigation troughs for taro terraces, was used as a traditional knife for cutting the umbilical cord of a newborn, as a stamp for dyeing bark tapa cloth, and for four hula instruments - nose flute, rattle, stamping pipes and Jews harp. The wood is used for knitting needles and the fibre can be used for yarn. Coarse bamboo paper is still used to make spirit money in many Chinese communities.

A high quality hand-made paper is still produced in small quantities. The fibre of bamboo has been used to make paper in China since early times. Every few days the tube is removed and replaced higher up the fast-growing culm. Bamboo canes are normally round in cross-section, but square canes can be produced by forcing the new young culms to grow through a tube of square cross-section and slightly smaller than the culm's natural diameter, thereby constricting the growth to the shape of the tube.

Culms may be cut and hollowed into vases or drinkware, tubes, or pipes for liquids. When bamboo is harvested for wood, care is needed to select mature stems that are several years old, as first-year stems, although full size, are not fully woody and are not strong. However bamboo wood is easily infested by wood-boring insects unless treated with wood preservatives or kept very dry. Modern companies are attempting to popularize flooring made of bamboo pieces steamed, flattened, glued together, finished, and cut.

This makes it useful for many things such as houses (in tropical climates), fences, bridges, walking sticks, furniture, chopsticks, food steamers, toys, construction scaffolding, hats, abaci and various musical instruments such as the shakuhachi, and jinghu. Bamboo forms a very hard wood, especially when seasoned, and is light and exceptionally tough. Zhúyèqīng jiǔ (竹叶青酒) is a green-colored Chinese liquor that has bamboo leaves as one of its ingredients. The sap of young stalks tapped during the rainy season may be fermented to make ulanzi (a sweet wine), or simply made into a soft drink.

Pickled bamboo, used as a condiment, may also be made from the pith of the young shoots. However, the shoots of some species contain toxins that need to be leached or boiled out before they can be eaten safely. They are used in Asian stir fry, and are available in supermarkets in various sliced forms. The shoots (new bamboo culms that come out of the ground) of bamboo, called zhú sǔn (竹笋) in Chinese, are edible.

A newly transplanted bamboo plant can take 1-2 years before it sends up new shoots (culms) and will have many seasons of "sizing up" before new shoots achieve the maximum potential height for that species. For the species most widely cultivated in gardens, 3-5 cm per day is more typical. Several subtropical bamboo species can grow 30 cm (1 foot) per day, with some species having been documented as growing over 100 cm in one day. Established bamboo will send up shoots that generally grow to their full height in a single season, making it the fastest growing woody plant.

Since the new roots are dependent on older parts of the root system for nourishment, anything beyond the shovel cut will die in the ground and be unable to reestablish itself. The root system is generally very close to the surface, so, if rhizome pruning is done twice a year, it will sever most, if not all, of the new growth. The second method is rhizome pruning, which involves taking a sharp spade and cutting down into the ground 30 cm (1 foot) all along the perimeter that is to be maintained. The first involves surrounding it with a physical barrier, usually a special, high density, plastic roll material made for this purpose; this is placed in a 60-90 cm (2-3 feet) deep ditch around the planting, and angled out at the top to direct the rhizomes to the surface.

There are two main ways to prevent the spread of running bamboo into adjacent areas. The reputation of bamboo as being highly invasive is often exaggerated, and situations where it has taken over large areas is often the result of years of untended or neglected plantings. If bamboo must be removed, an alternative to digging it up is to cut down the culms, and then repeatedly mow down new shoots as they arise, until the root system exhausts its energy supply and dies. Once established as a grove, it is difficult to completely remove bamboo without digging up the entire network of underground rhizomes.

If neglected, they can be invasive over time and can cause problems by moving into adjacent areas. Some can send out runners several metres a year, while others can stay in the same general area for long periods. Running bamboo species are highly variable in their tendency to spread; this is related to both the species and the soil and climate conditions. Clumping bamboo species tend to spread underground slowly.

There are two patterns for the spreading of bamboo, "clumping" (monopodial) and "running" (sympodial). They spread mainly through their roots and/or rhizomes, which can spread widely underground and send off new culms to break through the surface. In cultivation, care needs to be taken of their potential for invasive behaviour. Many bamboos are popular in cultivation as garden plants.

This is thought to have evolved to reduce the effect of predators of the seed, who would be unable to depend on a predictable food supply. Furthermore, all the individuals of the species will flower at the same time in a large geographical region. Some of these species are monocarpic, the plant dying after the seed matures. Some species of bamboo rarely flower, some of them only every 10-100 or more years.

A single stem of bamboo from an established root system typically reaches full height in just one year, but then persists for several years, gradually increasing the number of side branches and branchlets. For comparison, palms, which like bamboos are monocotyledons, are equally dissimilar to other trees, yet are usually called trees. Many of the larger bamboos are very tree-like in appearance, but perhaps illogically they are rarely called trees, despite that term being a growth form, not a botanical term. They are thus, unlike most other grasses, extensively branched; in large-growing species a single stem may carry many thousands of branchlets.

The stems are jointed, with regular nodes; each node bears one leaf, and may also have one to several side branches. The stems, or 'culms', can range in height from a few centimetres to 40 metres, with stem diameters ranging from 1 mm to 30 cm. . Major areas with no native bamboos include Europe, North Africa, Western Asia, northern North America, most of Australia and Antarctica.

They also occur in sub-Saharan Africa, and in the Americas from the southeast of the USA south to Chile, there reaching their furthest south anywhere, at 47°S latitude. They occur from Northeast Asia (at 50°N latitude in Sakhalin), south throughout East Asia west to the Himalaya, and south to northern Australia. Bamboos are found in diverse climates, from cold mountains to hot tropical regions. Some of its members are giants, forming by far the largest members of the grass family.

Bamboos are a group of woody perennial evergreen plants in the true grass family Poaceae, subfamily Bambusoideae, tribe Bambuseae. Shibataeinae. Racemobambodinae. Nastinae.

Melocanninae. Guaduinae. Chusqueinae. Bambusinae.

Arundinariinae. Arthrostylidiinae.