Bamboo: The Amazing Grass A Guide to the Diversity and Study of Bamboos in Southeast Asia

About this book

This well-illustrated book introduces the bamboos of Southeast Asia, a region well known for its incredible range of bamboo utilization and diversity. The author, a bamboo specialist in Malaysia, discusses the salient aspects of bamboo structure, biology and conservation and provides brief perspectives into the sometimes difficult tasks of bamboo classification and identification.

Bamboos are notoriously difficult for botanists to study because of the rarity of flowering material in many cases and the incomplete state of earlier reference collections on which many species names have been based. Field studies into their variation and of their basic biological attributes have also been scarce. Yet they hold immense fascination because they are such a useful group of plants that are linked to both traditional life and modern innovative use.

Ever wondered where to get a not-too-long, yet adequate introduction to what bamboos are? Bamboo: The Amazing Grass is a book that gives just that, plus an insider's perspective of the way bamboos are special in Southeast Asia.

Contents

    Foreword viii
    Preface ix
    Bamboos and Us 1
    How bamboos are classified 7
    Cultivated or wild, common or rare 9
    Common bamboos 10
    Rare (and endangered) bamboos 13
    The structure of the bamboo plant 21
    The stem 21
    The branch complement 24
    Leaves and sheaths 27
    Flowering branches 30
    Flowers 32
    Fruits 33
    The flowering of bamboos 35
    Identifying bamboos 39
    Useful characters for identification 40
    Southeast Asian bamboos 59
    Identification key 59
    Conserving bamboos 67
    The useful or potentially useful species 67
    Naturally rare or endangered species 70
    Important collections of Southeast Asian bamboos 71
    Collecting bamboo specimens 73
    Acknowledgements 76
    References 77
    Appendix: Selected facilities with living collections of Southeast Asian bamboos 79

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