- Plant Name: Bamboo
- Plant Type: Evergreen Flowering Plant
- Taxonomy Family: Poaceae
- Taxonomy Subfamily: Bambusoideae
- Taxonomy Genera: 115
- Taxonomy Species: 1,400+
23 Bamboo Facts for Kids
- Bamboo is a common name for a group of evergreen flowering plants.
- Bamboo is sometimes called a tree, but botanically it’s a grass.
- Bamboo is a perennial flowering plant, which means it lives more than two years.
- Bamboo plants are members of the subfamily Bambusoideae in the Poaceae family.
- There are three tribes for 128 current genera for bamboo under the subfamily Bambusoideae.
- The three tribes for bamboo are Arundinarieae, Bambuseae and Olyreae.
- The Arundinarieae tribe contains woody bamboos from warm temperate climates.
- The Bambuseae tribe contains woody bamboos from warm tropical climates.
- The Olyreae tribe contains herbaceous bamboos from humid tropical climates.
- There are over 1,700 known species of bamboo found worldwide.
- Bamboo can be found in warm template climates to hot and humid tropical climates.
- Bamboo grows on every continent except for Europe and Antarctica.
- Many species of bamboo plants can grow very fast and some are considered the fastest growing plants in the world.
- Certain species of bamboo can grow 35 inches in a single day, that’s 1.45 inches per hour.
- Dragon bamboo (Dendrocalamus sinicusicus) is the tallest growing bamboo species in the world. It can reach a height of 151 feet and each culm of a dragon bamboo can weight over 900 pounds.
- It’s rare to see a bamboo plant flower. They only flower about once every 100 years. However, when they do flower every bamboo plant of the same species does it around the planet at the same time.
- Bamboo is a very effective carbon dioxide absorbers via the photosynthesis process.
- Bamboo can absorb 30% more carbon dioxide than an equivalent mass of trees.
- Bamboo is an excellent renewal resource that can replace traditional timber from trees.
- Bamboo can be harvested for human use and it will grow back without having to be replanted. Their root system will develop new roots after the harvest.
- Bamboo doesn’t need any special chemicals (fertilizers, pesticides, etc.) to grow.
- Bamboo is very strong, and some species have a tensile strength that is higher than steel.
- Bamboo can survive a disaster better than any other plant. There is plenty of evidenced that proved bamboo survived and thrived the best in Hiroshima, Japan after the 1945 atomic bombing.
- You know that lucky bamboo plant you have in your house? It’s not bamboo! Lucky bamboo houseplants sold in stores are Dracaena sanderiana, which is not a true bamboo grass.
- The Giant panda (Ailuropoda melanoleuca) almost exclusively eats bamboo.
Pictures of Bamboo
A picture of a forest with bamboo trees.
A picture of a path in a bamboo tree forest.
A picture of a panda eating from a bamboo.
A picture of bamboo harvested to make different products.
A picture of someone watering a indoor bamboo houseplant.
A picture of an environmentally friendly toothbrush made from bamboo.
Find More Facts About Bamboo
- About Bamboo – Discover more awesome facts about bamboo on the Palomar Community College website.
- Facts About Bamboo – Find more facts about bamboo on the IBUKU website.
- How Bamboo Grows – Learn the stages of growth for bamboo on the Lewis Bamboo website.
- How to Shape Bamboo – Read this The Spruce article to learn how to grow and shape lucky bamboo.
