[Greenbuilding] [BULK] Re: Plybooboo

[Lawrence Lile]

Hear Hear! That's why I'm so interested in bamboo.  

Yes, promoting native species is a great idea, however not something that should be engaged in as a purist.  I can say that having dined on oats native to Europe, wheat bread native to Turkey, and soy milk native to China just this morning.  Had I stuck to species native to Missouri, I would have been eating cattails, acorns, lichen and catbrier roots.  I have eaten all those things, but I would not recommend it as a steady diet.    

There are plenty of useful and interesting native species that need to be planted - I'm working on a whole yard full of them, but focusing on native species exclusively is ignoring the reality of the world we live in.  
 
 
Lawrence Lile, P.E., LEED AP
-----Original Message-----
From: greenbuilding-bounces at listserv.repp.org [mailto:greenbuilding-bounces at listserv.repp.org] On Behalf Of YankeePerm at aol.com
Sent: Friday, February 09, 2007 8:31 AM
To: GREENBUILDING at listserv.repp.org
Subject: [BULK] Re: [Greenbuilding] Plybooboo
Importance: Low

Just about everything you eat is non-indigenous.   This includes plants 
native to the Western hemisphere that were imported to new areas in North and South 
American by Native Americans.   If you eat only Sunflowers in Kansas you are 
OK.   This indigenous vs. native issue is one of the most bogus confusions I 
have to deal with.

I have treated the issue of bamboo extensively in previous posts on this list 
and the articles are doubtless in the archives.   Since bamboo rarely 
reproduces by seed, the likelihood of spreading as a weed is much less than, say, a 
tomato, which is indigenous only to MesoAmerica.   Many temperate bamboo 
species do spread by runners.   This makes them less expensive to establish than 
clumping, tropical genera, though the tropical species include some of the 
fantastic timber bamboo species.   But with temperate species attaining 5 inches in 
diameter and 75 feet in height, they are adequate for many structural 
applications.   The most commonly used temperate genus, Phyllostachys, is highly 
palatable to livestock, as has been mentioned this week, so control is a matter of 
a fence.   I've seen a huge grove of P. nigra Henon in Alabama stopped dead by 
a strand of barbed wire with cattle on the other side.   Mowing will do the 
same, as will moating.  One of the really rampant bamboos is actually the 
native genus, of which in North America we have one or two species depending on who 
is describing them.   A commonly used landscape species, P. aurea, is one of 
the most rampant in the world, hence the misconception that all bamboos are 
rampant.   Even so, a moat stops it cold.   I've planted it where I want a 
surefire screen.   However since there are 1500 species of bamboo, many with 
numerous varieties, you don't have to grow P. aurea to have bamboo, and in most 
climates where we would grow bamboo for construction materials, it is inferior to 
numerous other species and varieties within those species.   

If we are willing to grow fields of wheat or lettuce without cringing, why 
not have fields of bamboo?   The difference is that the bamboo has a chance of 
being sustainable, depending on how we manage and harvest it.   It needs no 
cultivation, little weeding (removal of invasive native trees, for example), and 
will produce indefinitely, probably longer that our species has left to reside 
on this bit of iron and nickel spinning around the sun.   If it is unmanaged, 
it will indeed 'invade' the forest, where it fills an empty niche as an 
understory woody grass.   As the forest matures, the bamboo may be shaded out, 
depending on species, but that is true of many species, native and exotic alike.   
If the forest weakens, or we have a tree plantation that can no longer canopy 
because it has been monocropped too many times, the bamboo may form the 
canopy.   So we can replace the unsustainable plantation with sustainable bamboo 
without ever clearing the land.   The pines are removed when they are ready from 
around the bamboo.   A bit of bamboo will be trashed in the process, but with 
a good strong mat to form new shoots, the damage is temporary and the soil is 
not damaged any further.   

If you want to have an even quicker return, one can run free-range poultry 
with bamboo to mutual benefit.   Of course, the   chickens are nonnative birds, 
so the robins should watch out!   Actually, the robins are going extinct from 
loss of habitat, which bamboo may actually replace.   In any event, it can 
substitute for removal of more habitat.   

Outside of Asia, the northern hemisphere temperate zone is deficient in woody 
grasses.   There is absolutely no valid reason why informed and practical 
introduction of species from comparable environments in Asia should not be 
undertaken. Indeed, there are plantations that have been in North America for 
perhaps nearly 100 years without overrunning the countryside.   Lets try to look at 
the matter a little more calmly.


Dan Hemenway

In a message dated 2/8/07 12:03:45 PM, bergman at cyberg.com writes:


> Are there issues with Bamboo being a non-indigenous plant and threatening 
> existing eco systems? I'd thought that, because it is essentially rapidly 
> growing weed, it is hard to control and can potentially spread beyond farms and 
> overtake systems.
> 





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