Bamboo, bamboo...All the things to do with bamboo

My friend Chad Schott, of Drumzrguruven, makes his rainsticks and didgeridoos from bamboo. He cleans out the dead plants to keep a garden or a wild patch of it healthy and is fully aware of all the wonderful things it can do. I would love to see it become a greater part of our usage to replace things that don't grow as fast and don't have as much versatility.

~C.S. Webbspun

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This is part of an article from the New York Times. Click on the NYTimes to read the rest of the story.


BAMBOO is a versatile, ancient plant that shows up in creation myths as well as in pots on Manhattan terraces. It comes in clumping varieties that behave themselves and running “timber” types that spread by rhizomes — great for a grove, but not so good when they are planted as a property screen that escapes into a neighbor’s yard.

But it’s that very vigor that has environmentalists hailing bamboo as the new “It” plant for saving the earth.

Bamboo is a workhorse at sequestering carbon dioxide and pumping out oxygen. It is a tough plant that manufactures its own antibacterial compounds and can thrive without pesticides. And its porous fibers make a cloth that breathes and is as soft as silk. In fact, there is such a stampede of fabric designers to China and Japan, where it is farmed and processed — no such industry exists in the United States — that in its May issue, National Geographic predicted that “this upstart fabric may someday compete with King Cotton.”