Bamboo weeding..

Today, we finally attacked the bamboo that is attacking us.. It threatens to undermine everything with its forcefull roots and is slowly creeping into the neighbour´s garden..It actually acts like an attacking army. So it was a Saturday in Washington of bamboo chopping, tearing up roots, getting badly bitten by clouds of mosquitoes living in the thickets..

While chopping the bamboo I kept thinking of the many uses of this strong plant I have encountered in many parts of the world. And about it´s multitude of values:

• Bamboo produces 14 tons of "wood" an acre. The leading U.S. wood producing tree, Southern yellow pine, only grows 8 tons.
• Bamboo is the plant for carbon abatement as the plant can store “four times the CO2 of a stand of trees of similar size”
• Bamboo's porous fibers make a cloth that breathes, is a soft subsitiute for silk and National Geographic Magazine says “this upstart fabric may someday compete with King Cotton.”
• You can't eat a tree but you can eat bamboo. Bamboo shoots can be eaten raw or cooked if you "pop them off underground, just before they emerge from the dirt."
  "The cane the world can lean on" is an interesting article I found in The New York Times. If you are interested, it just might be useful reading..
  I just had to publish this pix of the gorgeous panda grubbing up some of his 40 kg of bamboo/day I took the other day at the Washington Zoo !