
“Once-in-a-Hundred Year” Sightings of Bamboo Blossoms Reported in Japan - vectorbunny
https://grapee.jp/en/114838
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radarsat1
> Perhaps even more surprising than the long intervals at which they flower is
> the fact that all plants of the same stock of bamboo will bloom at the same
> time, and then die, no matter where they are in the world.

> Although the mechanism has yet to be explained by science, many believe
> there is some kind of natural “alarm clock” in the plant’s cells causing the
> behavior.

That is amazing. I'm having a hard time imagining how that could even be
possible, for DNA to have an "absolute" sense of time. Some kind of
day/night/time of year "counting" mechanism?

~~~
dessant
What does "same stock" mean in this case?

~~~
foxhop
Same stock typically means same root stock, which is how people propagate and
bamboo naturally clones itself.

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wodenokoto
Bamboo blossom is a super interesting botanical fact, and a regular front-
pager on Reddits "Today I learned"

> For example, devastating consequences occur when the Melocanna bambusoides
> population flowers and fruits once every 30–35 years[6] around the Bay of
> Bengal. The death of the bamboo plants following their fruiting means the
> local people lose their building material, and the large increase in bamboo
> fruit leads to a rapid increase in rodent populations. As the number of
> rodents increases, they consume all available food, including grain fields
> and stored food, sometimes leading to famine.[7] These rats can also carry
> dangerous diseases, such as typhus, typhoid, and bubonic plague, which can
> reach epidemic proportions as the rodents increase in number.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bamboo_blossom#Impact](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bamboo_blossom#Impact)

~~~
nwhatt
Possibly one of the best Nova titles ever - "Rat Attack" follows this
phenomenon: [https://www.pbs.org/video/nova-rat-
attack/](https://www.pbs.org/video/nova-rat-attack/)

~~~
magic_beans
Video not available in my area! But why!? Have the rights expired for US
viewers??

~~~
pettycashstash2
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------
kaybe
> And if you feel discouraged by the notion that they are bad omens, why not
> consider the silver lining: While it's true that the flowers signal the
> death of the plant, they also symbolize new beginnings, since those who rely
> on supercentenarian species like madake can eventually expect a fresh,
> healthy and abundant supply of new shoots which will last for a very long
> time.

This would fit very well with the notion that starting a new era also means a
new start. (It might make people a little eager to overreport I suspect.)

(Before Meiji era, Japanese emperors used to routinely proclaim new eras when
some notable event happened or they just felt change was needed. Common
reasons are big earthquakes and other natural desasters, for example, but
there also eras that were started over the sighting of a white or red bird or
the find of a gold mining spot (it actually turned out not to be). (The mean
era length is something like 5 years.))

~~~
luckydata
Now we have HBO doing that job for us. We just ended the Game of Thrones era,
to be replaced by the Westworld era soon.

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Jedd
Bamboo species are amazing. I grow Bambusa oldhamii - useful for food (shoots)
and timber. It's a clumping variety, so quite easy to control, and tolerant
(if not particularly happy) of dry, wet, heat, and cold.

But my clones are taken from a variety that flowered in the 90's, IIRC, so
there's some confidence they won't all flower (and immediately die) for
another ~70 years.

The variety they're talking about here is a mild running type (most runners
are _very_ rampant, and not recommended unless you've got containment systems
in place).

Thailand famously had a big flowering event in the late 1980's that killed off
vast tracts of plantations.

~~~
checker
I wish my bamboo (inherited from a previous owner) would flower instead of
battling me for control of my yard. I really need to read up on the best way
to control it - sounds like my variety might be a "runner".

~~~
dbcurtis
I think the way to control running bamboo is with a deep solid fence/wall dug
into a trench. I am led to understand that there is a depth that a particular
specie will not run below.

I may be wrong. The previous owner of my neighbor's house had a bamboo
garden... the current owner was not aware of how to maintain it. The previous
owner of my house had a rose garden. I am not a particularly clever gardener,
and having grown up in Minnesota, was not familiar with the habits of bamboo.
The bamboo ran under the fence, and attacked the roses in our yard before I
noticed it. The bamboo identified rose bush root clumps, attacked, surrounded,
and choked them.

So in the aftermath, I ripped out dead roses and built a play structure for my
offspring, my neighbor ripped out the bamboo jungle and created a nice patio,
so we both netted out OK. Our research led us to determine that a trenched
solid barrier should have been put in place originally, but we weren't going
to test the theory.

------
isolli
It reminds me of cicadas, an insect with long life cycles:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cicada#Life_cycle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cicada#Life_cycle)

> Some cicada species have much longer life cycles, such as the North American
> genus, Magicicada, which has a number of distinct "broods" that go through
> either a 17-year or, in some parts of the region, a 13-year life cycle. The
> long life cycles may have developed as a response to predators, such as the
> cicada killer wasp and praying mantis. A specialist predator with a shorter
> life cycle of at least two years could not reliably prey upon the cicadas.

There's also an evolutionary theory behind why these are prime numbers:
[https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/the-
cica...](https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/the-cicadas-love-
affair-with-prime-numbers)

------
superqwert
I wonder how long the seeds will take to germinate. I have some seeds of a
hardier and more common bamboo Chusquea culeou, which have been stratified in
a variety of ways and put in moist soil for over half a year now - none have
germinated yet. After getting worried, I've done some research and it turns
out that many types of bamboo can spend years dormant in the ground, before
suddenly shooting up and growing at incredible speeds.

~~~
brensmith
I've germinated a few seeds (P. edulis 'Moso' & Fargesia Jiuzhaigou IV 'Black
Cherry') purchased on AliExpress (very inexpensive). I planted about 200 seeds
in July of last year and achieved a germination rate of about 5%. My
understanding is that bamboo seeds are not viable for very long, but it could
also be that I didn't get my seeds from a very reputable dealer.

------
PuffinBlue
Wow, today I am one of the lucky ten thousand. This is a beautiful bit of the
natural world I had no idea about.

It's wonderful to learn of something so 'purely' interesting, and (now I've
dived a little down the rabbit hole) shared amongst other species like Cicada.

------
_ph_
At the end of the 90ies, most specimen of Fargesia blossomed and died in
Europe. One big contributor was, that basically they were descendant of very
few, if not a single plant brought to Europe around the year 1900. With a more
"natural" population, the blossoms shouldn't be that much of a big hit. I am
also surprised that Phyllostachys is said to die - all literature I knew
claimed that the death after blossom is limited to Fargesia.

------
pas
> Perhaps even more surprising than the long intervals at which they flower is
> the fact that all plants of the same stock of bamboo will bloom at the same
> time, and then die, [...]

What?

I thought bamboo is a fast growing thing, and it's easy to grow bamboo. Just
stick it into the soil in the right conditions and it'll sprout roots and
grow. (It can even be grown from seeds.)

~~~
wodenokoto
Growing and flowering are two different things.

As the article mentions, some types of bamboo will flower only once every 100
odd years. When they do, they pollenate each-other and grow fruits and die.

In some parts of the world rats will feasts on these fruits, and rodent
populations will explode, contributing to the "Bad Omen".

> Just stick it into the soil in the right conditions

When all the bamboo decides to flower and die at the same time, what exactly
are you planning to stick in the ground?

~~~
Qwertystop
> When all the bamboo decides to flower and die at the same time, what exactly
> are you planning to stick in the ground?

Presumably, the seeds from the fruits from the last generation. Though they
would certainly take a bit of time.

~~~
nostalgk
From what I can gather, it appears that a large amount of industry in Japan
relies (or did at some time) on the long flowering cycle causing continual
growth of the bamboo stalks, only further complicated by the cloning process
that likely cuts from the same plants.

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mangatmodi
Long back I read that Bamboo blossoms are often accompanied by famines due to
rise in rat population.

~~~
pvaldes
In the past maybe. Now cats, dogs and foxes population just would explode.

In the 21 century finding some glass jars or metallic recipients with a solid
cover lid shouldn't be a great problem. If you can find a beer or a cocacola
in your village you have yet a rat-proof recipient for safely storing seeds.
Rodents are edible also if not other food is available

Is also interesting to notice that this bamboo ecology fact, seen as a symbol
of bad luck, gave us an unexpected and priceless gift: chicken eggs. Domestic
hens are able to lay 12 months a year because red jungle fowl and bamboo
forests are linked and evolved to get advantage of years of bamboo flowering

~~~
thaumasiotes
> In the past maybe. Now cats, dogs and foxes population just would explode.

Why would the response of cats, dogs, and foxes be different now than in the
past?

~~~
pvaldes
There is a hypothesis in ecology named "the mesopredator release". It states
that when big predators are hunted until extinction, small and mid sized
predator populations increase dramatically.

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arkades
That site benefited enormously from reader mode.

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squeezingswirls
> The rest of the article can be viewed on our partner’s website, grape Japan
> at ”Once-In-A-Hundred Year” Sightings of Bamboo Blossoms Reported In Japan“
> ([https://grapee.jp/en/114838](https://grapee.jp/en/114838))

Why don't link the complete article instead of the japan-forward one?

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xtf
New Reiwa era, bad bamboo omen. OK

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franciscojgo
Glitch in the matrix. Someone left original CSS href in all copies of bamboos.

