Beyond Words Studio for the BBC. More than 60 pieces of highly shareable animated data visualizations that offer thought-provoking answers to the questions sparked in everyday life.
They are hardy to zone 7.Have a patch of these .When they are teenager there is more chance to flower and be incedibile.1-3 is if u want them very tender .4-10 is the normal .11-12 is more fibrous
A lot of plants grow ridiculously fast. Even your garden variety vegetables can pile on inches at an insane rate. The thing with bamboo and others listed here is that it only does this for so long before it slows down, and, it may take a while to get up to this growth speed...
The difference is, these are hard, dense plants (woody, if you will). A garden tomato stem is rather weak and floppy by comparison, while bamboo makes for great flooring or is even used as a primary structural element in vernacular architecture.
@@TheSpecialJ11 um no, just no! Bamboo is a grass, it produces hollow or soft inside stems in the same way as other grasses such as corn & sugarcane. That is what it should have been compared to, NOT trees! Straw has been used as flooring & roofing & walls historically & hemp has historically been used to tie together materials like bamboo, as well as to secure ships, even Titanic sized ones because it has vastly more strength than bamboo has! Gourds & bamboo have been used interchangeably as water holders too, used dependent on what is native to the area, but as travel expanded, gourd seeds were moved around & began replacing bamboo as water holders, because they grow much faster & are more durable & long lasting as jugs & water carriers
@@mehere8038 What are you trying to say here? You do know most species of trees are not related at all right? It's a convergent trait to evolve lignin and cellose to hold a plant's body against gravity and winds. So it's entirely fair to compare grasses to a tree, because trees are not one specific group of lifeforms, rather a large category of them. I will hold however comparing a fast growing mostly underground based plant to a tree is unfair. A tree won't grow ten more trees after you cut it down. Nor does it have a carpet strategy. Tree's mostly focus on their maximum height, not their broad ground coverage. (otherwise they wouldn't have needed their hard metabolically expensive structures.)
@@user-mc6dg6qe8l so in short, you are saying that bamboo should have been compared to other grasses? Cause those are the plants that fit the description you just gave, aren't they! That is what I am saying, bamboo is a type of grass & so should have been compared to other grasses, NOT trees
@@mehere8038 The thing is most trees aren’t even closely related to eachother, the first trees like lepidodendron and wattieza were more closely related to clubmosses and horsetails than they are to any other trees. Bamboo, with its arborescent growth and woody stem, is admittedly sometimes debated as to whether it’s a tree or not due to the lack of secondary growth (which for the record would also exclude things like palm trees), but it is more certainly not comparable to regular grass, grass is most definitely not woody, what matters for bamboo’s growth in relation to grass is they both pre-produce all of those cells and then expand them with water, allowing the extremely rapid growth - they aren’t producing new tissue, simply making existing tissue larger.
I like how they use a drawing of a lucky bamboo plant(Dracaena sanderiana) which isn't even a type of bamboo, also the spiral tip is just how they sell them at the store, they don't naturally grow like that lol.
@@Covid-me1xf He isn't wrong though, he's pointing out an obvious deception that kind of undermines the entire credibility of the poster. Obviously its a minute long video meant to be fast and interesting, but it should at least stick to truth. For example, it doesn't even list the type of bamboo that grows like this. Which is doubly bad considering they pictured a commercial product.
@@Covid-me1xf Its a reference bro lmfao, massive difference between using something common as a reference point and then using false and misleading illustrations.
Yeah cause the harvest window is only about 2 days cause if you harvest too early they'll be white on the inside but if you harvest them too late they'll be mushy
tree isn't conected to any specific famiily of plants, it's just a word humans use for plants that grow very big and woody so it doesn't really matter @@larietournelle7904
Bamboo needs specific conditions to grow like that. If the conditions aren't met, fast-growing plants usually just die. Slow growers are normally less picky.
Interestingly, this is sort of how glyphosate works. "When plants are exposed to glyphosate, they are unable to produce certain amino acids that are crucial for their development. As a result, the plants expend their stored energy rapidly in an attempt to grow, which eventually leads to their death."
@@BenjaminGoose agent orange is actually a much better example for what you are trying to say, it doesn't prevent any amino acids, it just provides additional plant growth hormones, causing it to grow at such an accelerated rate that it becomes too elongated to support it's own weight & dies as a result
I am growing bamboo in a location where it is never grown. First year was extremely slow, now we are entering its second summer, and it really grows fast, not as fast as in video though. Just water every 2 days, in poor rocky soil..
@@officersoulknight6321 From what I've heard, bamboo grows most of its tissues and cells early on - which starts as a slow-growing stage; then, it spends time filling these pre-existing cells with more water and nutrients to make them larger, rather than making new cells - which causes its fast-growing stage.
Fun fact : Bamboo don't actaully -grow- per se, that fast, they're grown underground, but all folded segments on segments, and when a bamboo shoot pops out of the ground, it's actually already its adult size ! Then the bamboo shoot extends theses segments and it "unfolds" all the way up, like an accordion
The real genuine continuously fast grower is elephant grass . Bamboo only has a ten week growing period then seems to store energy for another growth spurt the following season.
Never heard of any plant that grew 0.3km in total, let alone per year. Don't you mean 33.238 mm per year? So 33 meters, that makes a lot more sense. Or are we talking about the root system?
Yeah, I don't know who let that through. It is true that they can grow up to a metre a day, and someone extrapolated this over 365 days. They actually max out at about 20m.
I dont think its fair to include adult bamboo patches growing, without including other connected plant colony systems like Pando a giant birch forest of clones that are connected
@@doomsdoor Do you know why you never see bamboo seed for sale in packets at nurseries? Cause it grows so slowly at that stage of life that it's not even viable to do it! Commercially grown bamboo isn't grown from seed cause of what a waste of resources that would be
The fastest growing hardwood is considered Paulownia elongata at 10-20' per year. Around where I live green ash and white mulberry grows at least 3-6' in a given year depending on the site. Black locust is supposed to be the fastest growing native (to North America) however. The internet says it grows at a rate of 3-4' per year but I'm positive that's "undercutting" it (pun intended lol) since it says green ash is 2-3' per year and white mulberry is 1-2' and I could go take pictures of an ash that started growing this year already 5' tall and a white mulberry at 4'.
well bamboo is a grass, not a tree, so I think it's fair we include other grasses too in order to answer your question & the answer is sugarcane. Total biomass per hectare per year, sugarcane outperforms everything. C4 photosynthesisers (mostly grasses) such as sugarcane, consistently outperform C3 photosynthesisers (the vast majority of trees) in warm conditions. Paulownia elongata is commonly cited as being a C4, but there is a lack of evidence to support this classification, it appears to have just been assumed it's a C4, due to how fast it grows
Former neighbour grew kudzu that killed most of my plants :(( those things grow like a foot overnight. Oh well, he's a *former* neighbour for obvious reasons. Don't miss him one bit. Kudzu is invasive, please don't do that.
"plants and trees grow at different speeds"... trees ARE plants. I understood what the sentence meant but it would have been better to put it in another way. Nice video, cheers!
A friend had a potted bamboo on her covered porch. We left to go shopping and it was about 4" from the ceiling. We got bach and it was bent over from hitting the ceiling.
Bamboo was used as torture device. Basically someone was chained to a chair with the bottom missing. A bamboo sapling was placed below them and let it grow through the victim
HIGHLY unlikely that was possible. That method would allow enough movement for the person to be able to wriggle enough to cause the bamboo to be altered in growing direction to grow around them. The chained in a lying down position is more credible than that, but none of these claims have ever actually been verified
One of the fastest growing evergreen trees are Arizona cupressus more than 50 cm per year, also tasmanian eucaliptus around 100 cm per year, I have those trees in my garden, in a pretty dry region in Romania and after 3-4 years those trees which at the transplantation were 50cm tall, now are over 250-300 cm in height.
Facts to Bamboo: While its growing so fast, earlier in Time People use this as a torture Methode. They hang the victim with the stomatch look to the ground and plant a Bamboo under the Stomatch. So its make the way torugh the stomatch while its growing.
This is why bamboo products are so much more economical than traditional paper products. It grows so much faster! Think of how many trees it would take to equal one patch of bamboo.
um it's not more economical at all, hence why paper is NOT made of bamboo as standard! there are other elements involved in production, bamboo takes a lot of chemicals & processing to make it suitable. Sugarcane is actually the economical option that is becoming a feature of a lot of single use paper products nowadays, such as paper plates, cups, cutlery etc. Sugarcane produces more biomass per hectare per year than any other crop & the great thing about using it for plates etc is that they are best made from the pulp, after the sugar has been extracted from it, ie from the waste product, so VERY efficent option, now that people have figured out the processing systems to turn that into products (that like bamboo, still require chemicals etc)
@@mehere8038 It's because bamboo doesn't grow everywhere. Once it does, Bamboo as a substitute to common wood would be more beneficial to the environment.
@@BSnicks no, it's not because of that at all! Bamboo is a type of grass, with over 1000 different species & grows in conditions from snow to tropics. It's growing range is far more diverse than any tree species, due to how many different species there are within the term "bamboo". Native bamboo species are found on every continent, other than Australia & Antarctica. It is also found as native species on a lot of non-continent islands, such as Fiji & has been on other islands, such as Hawaii, since the Polynesians brought it there, along with the first human arrivals. Processing bamboo into something we see as usable paper today however, is FAR more difficult than doing the same with wood, cotton or hemp pulp. As I already said, the most beneficial option for the environment today would be sugarcane, since it grows MUCH faster than bamboo & only the waste is needed to make products such as paper, with the crop being able to be grown for food or bio-fuel & fully used as such & then the waste turned into paper instead of being burnt, as is currently the practice for most sugarcane pulp waste. There is no good reason to grow crops of bamboo specifically to use as paper when there is suitable materials currently available & being burnt! Banana plant stems are another plant fibre waste growing in use because again, they are waste products currently burnt, but able to produce high quality paper & cloth type products. Menstrual pads is one of the biggest uses of banana plant waste right now
Just a reality check. Where does bamboo grow 1000 feet a year? Temperate, ie. running bamboo grows quickly over about 3 weeks in spring and clumping bamboo grows fast for 2-3 months. Otherwise, bamboo does not grow taller, unless the culms are growing.
Growth of bamboo isn't as it seems . Individual spears grow fast but they ain't individual plants , you have to consider them as like branches of the larger bamboo Grove . They get their energy to grow not from photosynthesis but the sugars and nutrients produced by the grove . A single bamboo stalk growing from seed won't be so impressive . Fastest growing trees I've encountered are wattle and Eucalypt trees . I read somewhere that elephant grass is fastest growing land plant but seaweed is absolute fastest growing plant .
I suspect Bamboo only grows this fast from a root mass. If you grow it from seed I strongly doubt it is this fast. Let's compare apples to apples; Oak and Birch when coppiced or pollarded produce a secondary growth that returns very quickly. Measure that and compare that because bamboo is cultivated in a similar manner to coppiced or pollarded plants.
I guess it depends on the varieties. Because the bamboos in my neighbour's garden definitely don't grow that fast 😅 ! Probable 10 times slower tant stated here. Which is already pretty fast !
given all are trees except bamboo that's a grass, a vine shouldn't exclude it (and this is all before we mention that a human child somehow ended up being included too). They just cherry picked to give the results they wanted though
Bamboo grows for 2 to 3 years underground before couming out the ground, it grows his rings and they just extend when ready, so it's not really the fastest growing plant, you need to talk about fastest biomass producer
Because the video is not totally right, bamboos from seeds take years to grow their underground part, then when this one is big enough, we start to see the upper part growing faster. If yours is in a small container put it in a bigger one. Some are slower than others and some giants could be really fast, depending on where they grow
yeh, mine did next to nothing for about 3 years after I bought them. I bought them about 1 metre tall & they had really good rootballs on them, planted in my garden & watched them do nothing for years, then suddenly, one of them took off & really grew & bushed out. Second one has started to do that now, has some fresh, bushy growth on it to about the 1 metre mark, hopefully this spring it's going to follow the other & send up really strong, fat new stems & a tonne of bushyness too. Has been a LONG wait for my privacy hedge! I really needed 3 plants to cover the area too, but decided to skimp on costs, thinking I could easily divide to get the extra plant I needed. I have put bags of peat moss on joints & doing that I've found will result in new plants when that part of the plant is then cut off & potted up, again a very slow process though, not really sure how long the peat moss has to be left on it for, as it doesn't develop any roots into it while on the plant for me, but if that is done for at least 6-12 months before cutting it off, it will then grow from the cutting consistently, however I have tried countless times to get bamboo to grow from cuttings & NEVER got a single one to take unless it's had that peat moss treatment first. All my cutting ones are still in pots & still doing next to nothing, first ones were only small though & certainly still alive a couple of years later. I have 2 new, large ones in progress now, will see how they go, first I cut off the plant about 2-3 months ago, at the start of winter & it has a really well developed set of roots now, but very few living leaves, second one I've only just removed from the plant, have kept stems much longer, nearly a metre in length, will see how that goes, fingers crossed it will establish well & be at least on par with the $50 bought ones within a few months of removing from the plant (was peat moss'ed on the plant for about a year, but as I said, zero roots on removal despite that)
Fun fact (TW torture) back in the day they used to lay people sentenced to death over bamboo shoots and the bamboo would grow through them skewering them alive.
never actually been verified. There are definitely POW's bodies that have been found with bamboo growing through them, but it's never been verified as to when the bamboo began growing through them, whether it was the cause of death, or whether it happened between their death & bones being found
saying bamboo grows that quickly isn't really a fair comparison. the important growth is that of the rhizomes underground. sure the culms mature quickly but it's not a fair comparison to the growth of trees. it's also a type of grass, not tree.
That’s because bamboo is a species of grass. It grows at the same relative speed as your lawn, but as each stem is many thousands of time larger, it appears to grow many thousands of times faster than your lawn. Reality is, if you could scale up many modern selectively bread grain crops, they would grow faster and higher than bamboo, and you would be able to hear them growing.
yup & c4 grasses grow faster than c3 ones like bamboo, rice & wheat, so line those up next to c4 grasses like corn & sugarcane & you will absolutely see the c4's growing faster. When I first managed to get sugarcane to grow at home, it was a single piece I managed to get to actually germinate right in the middle of winter, so I was bringing it inside, in my warm air conditioned bedroom each night, then putting it out in the sun each day. At one stage I actually started measuring it each hour to check I wasn't seeing something that wasn't real, it was growing 1-2cms an hour during the night in my warm bedroom! Within a week of it germinating, it was actually too tall for me to be able to carry in & out of my door twice a day, so I risked it & set it up with a mini-greenhouse & kept it outside & it slowed it's growth, but kept going & survived. That's much faster than bamboo or bread crops (other than corn, sorghum & millet, that as c4's can compete with that). There's actually a global project that's been in progress for many years now, trying to bio-engineer rice to make it a C4 crop so as to massively increase it's productivity
Some responders clearly don't understand the concept of ratio. A blade of grass is 1/1000th of the diameter of a blade of bamboo. Divide 90cm by 1000, and you get 0.09cm, or 0.9mm per day of growth a day in grass. Crazy idea, multiple that by 7, and you get 6.3mm growth a week. Damn, most lawn grasses double their length in a week in the growing season, which means they grow faster than bamboo. Damn I hate physics, logic, and the ability to research at times. Being able to educate people AND prove a key point in a video wrong in the same move is a hatred creating power.
@@gaijininja ratios can be applied everywhere. It still does not mean they're always a correlation, let alone rules. You can ratio your way from bamboo to grass the same way I could ratio a brick's length to a house's width. Its doesn't mean you have to apply ratios as rules, especially with nature. Anyways, this is youtube, no one is asking anything of you and less even expecting.
I think using bamboo to sequester vast amounts of carbon is a good idea, so long as it can be controlled. Maybe a large warehouse and hydroponics so the seeds dont spread and the hatvest can be more easily automated.
highest bio-mass producer per hectare is sugarcane. Bamboo's not even close in terms of what it can produce in terms of carbon sequestered. Even better with sugarcane, the juice can be used as sugar or converted into biofuel & there is still WAY more waste left over after that than the entire crop of bamboo will produce. That waste in sugarcane is normally in part used to burn to power all processing & transporting of the sugar or bio-fuel, but even after that, there is still more bio-mass left than bamboo produces to begin with. There's 21 MILLION HECTARES of sugarcane currently being produced in the world today though so WAY beyond anything you can even dream of in warehouses! 1 football stadium = 1 hectare, building 21 million football stadiums just to grow plants in to sequester carbon via hydroponics really isn't practical is it!
Hemp appears to be the answer for sequestering . Elephant grass is the fastest continuous grower and has also been suggested. The vagaries of the current global climate make it difficult to plan effectively . Fastest growing trees in my climate zone are Eucalypts and wattles/acacia . Many plants are configured to do their best growy in their preferred Goldilocks zones .
0:06 - "Plants and trees grow at different speeds." Trees ARE plants. That statement should read: 'Trees and other plants grow at different speeds.' A little nit-picky, but accuracy matters.
