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Japanese Bamboo

Japanese bamboo is amazing. It usually grows from root tubers sent out underground by the parent tree, but if you plant a seed, you will have to wait years before it sprouts, then it will grow to it’s full height in only 40 days. Japanese bamboo is actually a form of grass, but is so strong that construction workers often use it in place of steel to make scaffolding. Bamboo shoots are edible, and serve as a common vegetable in Japan.

I took these bamboo photos yesterday, as I was suprised to find the checkerboard pattern with green coloring on every other segment of this Japanese bamboo. It’s growing near a temple, so perhaps it’s just a little bit different variety from the regular Japanese bamboo we see all over the mountainsides in Southern Japan.

Bamboo photos are a bit of a challenge for two reasons. The dense foilage renders a bamboo grove quite dark, even when the sun is high. Many of the bamboo photos I took yesterday took so long to expose that they were grainy and out of focus. Also bamboo is so tall it’s quite a challenge to get the cathedral type feeling one experiences when walking through a grove.

If anyone knows the reason for the interesting coloring in these bamboo photos, please let me know!

Tags: bamboo photos, Japanese bamboo

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