Bamboo is a diverse group of perennial flowering plants in the grass family that has tremendous potential for helping to protect and restore the natural environment. Most of the more than 1400 species of bamboo are native to warm and moist tropical climates and to warm temperate climates, although many are also found in other regions, ranging from hot tropical climates to cool mountainous areas and highland cloud forests. Bamboos include some of the world's fastest-growing plants, with some species capable of growing more than 900mm per day.
Bamboo has long been used extensively in South Asia, Southeast Asia, and East Asia for a wide variety of applications. Examples of traditional and new applications include scaffolding, furniture, musical instruments, ladles, cutting boards, weapons, flooring, reed pens, room dividers, bicycles, bicycle helmets, channels for irrigation systems, clothing, sheets and other bedding, decorative plants, chopsticks, fishing rods, fences, paper, fuel, drinking cups, railway crossing gates, writing brushes, foot bridges, steamers for cooking, cosmetics, and even some traditional medicines.
Bamboo is also an important source of food. The soft shoots are commonly used to provide a unique texture and taste in a wide variety of Asian foods. When cooked they are highly nutritious, with a high content of fiber, vitamin B, potassium and other minerals and are very low in sugar, sodium and fat. Moreover, the shoots, stems and leaves are the major food source for the giant pandas of Southwest China, the red pandas of Nepal, and the bamboo lemurs in Madagascar. Bamboo is also consumed in Africa by elephants, chimpanzees and mountain gorillas. The bamboo borer moth larvae, considered a delicacy in Southeast Asia, also feed on bamboo.
Its rapid growth, its tolerance for marginal land, its increasingly extensive applications and the lack of pollution from its disposal make bamboo very useful for the replacement of some products made from plastics and other petrochemicals. This rapid growth and marginal land tolerance can also make it well suited for afforestation, carbon sequestration and climate change mitigation. However, care must be taken when planting bamboo, because some species are invasive and can have detrimental effects on other plants and on the habitat in general.