Question: What Is Bamboo?
What is bamboo? Although you'd never know it from the larger members of this group, the bamboos are really grasses.
Answer:
Given the height of some bamboos (over 100 feet tall), the answer to the question, What is bamboo? may be somewhat surprising. But the bamboos are, indeed, classified as woody, evergreen, perennial grasses.
Geographically, bamboos are most closely associated with the Orient, sub-Saharan Africa and Central and South America. Botanically, a great number of the bamboos can easily be recognized by their prominent, hollow stems, known as "culms," punctuated at intervals by nodes.
We can break down the bamboos into two classifications: running bamboos and clumping bamboos. But before I present that distinction, let's look at the uses for bamboos in the following FAQ....
