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According to local lore, a single root of bamboo was planted here at David’s home by Doctor Lynch during the 1930s. This bamboo root came from the Biltmore Estate, and to the Biltmore Estate from Central Park with Frederick Law Olmstead, renowned landscape architect. All the shoots of a single bamboo grove are part of the same root system, and this species is predicted to bloom in unison every 100 years.
This NY Times article from 1979 reports that seeds from bamboo blooms attract rodents, who flood the area and devastate nearby crops. Indeed, US settlers have largely had tense and frustrating relationships with bamboo. From farmers, to homeowners, to native plant restoration efforts, bamboo’s tenacious presence has expensive and labor intensive consequences.
Bamboo in David’s driveway
Talented at gaining territory, bamboo can overtake established guilds in forested land, and certainly guilds already disturbed by industrial activities. It is extremely difficult to displace, requiring application of herbicide, or even installment of a concrete moat (only sometimes effective), to barricade its rhizomatic roots. While controversial, bamboo has been reported to grow from its woodchips.
Clearing bamboo on David’s family land, to reintroduce curves in a straightened creek
In 1933, influential botanist Willard M. Porterfield published an article called “The Universal Provider”, he argues that bamboo constitutes a cultural epoch comparable to the Stone or Bronze ages. He writes:
“One can not live long in a country where bamboos grow and are used by the people without feeling that bamboo has contributed a great deal to the progress of that people and that the mastery of its uses marks a cultural stage in the development of their civilization.”
US settlers have a lot to learn about how to live alongside bamboo. While other cultures living with bamboo hold it as a prized resource, great teacher, or even deity, our classification of bamboo as an hazardous invasive elucidates some of cultural blind-spots. We are humbly seeking guidance within humanity’s archives of bamboo technologies and lore. We seek to contribute our efforts toward the next cultural stage of this Bamboo Era, of bamboo’s story on this land.
Bamboo stalk growing through a tarp
Scientifically, bamboo’s basic life cycle functions remain mysterious. For example, many species experience “gregarious flowering”— a blooming of all plants within a species across the world over a several year period, regardless of environmental conditions, followed by the death of entire forests. The genetic clock that triggers the flowering is not well understood.
Bamboo scholars warn against making generalizations, as there are over 1700 species. In fact, not all species are considered invasive. River Cane (Arundinaria gigantea) and Switch Cane (Arundanaria tecta) are two species native to this continent. Hill Cane (Arundinaria appalachiana), a species native to Appalachia was identified as recently as 2007.
As food, medicine, textile and building material, bamboo can serve functions in every room of the house. With an ability to uptake dangerous compounds from soil and water, bamboo holds phytoremediative properties. Thriving in human urine makes it ideal for greywater systems. It maintains a flexibility that lends itself to nonlinear structures. We use it as a massage tool, educating our anatomy on strength/flexibility. Older than our species, bamboo has accompanied human evolution as a cultural and spiritual entity. [For example](https://www.kocis.go.kr/eng/openVideos/view.do?seq=27205&page=5&pageSize=10&photoPageSize=6&totalCount=0&searchType=&searchText=#:~:text=Bamboo is the symbol of,winter of the four plants.), in Korean culture, bamboo teaches righteous living in a disorderly world.
Bamboo forest at the edge of an abandoned lot in West Asheville
Photos: Jadyn, Coda, Heron