Wednesday 4 April 2012

Bamboo and its uses

When I was in Budapest and I told some person I was going to Hong Kong, he said he'd never been but he knew that the scaffolding that you usually see as steel is made out of bamboo. Tough stuff, that bamboo.

And it's better than steel because it's floatable - in China it's now a tourist industry to float down rafts but for centuries fisherman and others used rafts made of bamboo as a primary mode of transport.

And it's better than wood because it's edible - different types of bamboo can be boiled as part of a soup, and it can be eaten as a snack in its entirety (chew to get the juice and then spit out the fibers), and its shoots can be eaten as part of a meal.

If anyone can name me a more versatile type of plant, let me know.

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