Bamboo Flowering Brings an Ecological Crisis!
Report: Santhosh Wilson Goveas & Dr L D’Souza
Daijiworld Media Network - Mangalore
Mangalore, Jan 30: You are in for a rare treat if you go towards Maria Bakery Lane, near Asha Kiran, Jesuit Residence, Pumpwell – you can see a bamboo in full flower. Although some bamboos flower every year, most species flower infrequently. In fact, many bamboos only flower at intervals as long as 60 or 120 years.
Bamboos belong to the family of grasses and like many grasses, including rice, the production of flowers and fruit spell the death knell of the plant. Large tracts of bamboos flower simultaneously and die simultaneously, precipitating an ecological crisis. Herbivorous animals that depend on bamboos for their fodder like the giant pandas are left without fodder. The gregarious flowering of bamboo produces large quantities of seeds, resulting in a population explosion of rats.
When the rainy season starts and the seeds germinate, there is no more food left for these huge hordes of rats. In places where there are large bamboo forests, the sudden transition from plenty of food to the near-total absence of food forces millions of rats out of the bamboo forests. They land in farms in the vicinity and play havoc with the standing crops, and devour the grains stored in granaries, thus bringing about famine as an aftermath of bamboo flowering. Because of this phenomenon, from time immemorial many beliefs are associated with bamboo flowering.
In general, bamboo flowering is considered as a bad omen as it is associated with rise in rodent population and onset of famine . Such famines are common in some East Asian countries like Myanmar and Japan, and also southern Africa, in the Indo- Myanmar frontier tract, especially in Mizoram.
In Mangalore Bamboos have almost disappeared. Only a few scattered specimens can still be seen here and there. A bamboo in flower is a rare sight in the middle of a town. You can see one if you walk back from the Mahaveer circle along the Kankanady road and turn into the narrow maria Bakery lane next to Car Wheels.
Bamboo is a group of perennial evergreen (except for certain temperate species) plants in the true grass family Poaceae. Giant bamboos are the largest members of the grass family. Bamboos occur in greatest abundance and variety in the south and southeast Asian countries, where traditionally they are used for a variety of purposes. Bamboos are also the fastest growing plants in the world. They are capable of growing up to 60 centimeters (24 in.) or more per day due to a unique rhizome-dependent system. There are more than 70 genera divided into about 1,000 species. Most bamboos are distinct from ordinary grasses in their perennial tree-like growth habits, and flowering (and seeding) only once, at the end of very long vegetative growth phases, followed often by the death of the flowered clumps.
This peculiar behaviour of bamboos has intrigued mankind for long , and still remains a mystery. The dynamic interaction between bamboo flowering, bamboo-seed predators (mainly rats), climatic change (the sudden transition from summer to the rainy season) was not realized earlier. As a result there are still a number of myths and fears associated with bamboo flowering.