“Once-in-a-Hundred Year” Sightings of Bamboo Blossoms Reported in Japan

&gt; 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.<p>&gt; 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.<p>That is amazing. I&#x27;m having a hard time imagining how that could even be possible, for DNA to have an &quot;absolute&quot; sense of time. Some kind of day&#x2F;night&#x2F;time of year &quot;counting&quot; mechanism?

Bamboo blossom is a super interesting botanical fact, and a regular front-pager on Reddits &quot;Today I learned&quot;<p>&gt; 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.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Bamboo_blossom#Impact" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Bamboo_blossom#Impact</a>

&gt; And if you feel discouraged by the notion that they are bad omens, why not consider the silver lining: While it&#x27;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.<p>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.)<p>(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.))

Bamboo species are amazing. I grow Bambusa oldhamii - useful for food (shoots) and timber. It&#x27;s a clumping variety, so quite easy to control, and tolerant (if not particularly happy) of dry, wet, heat, and cold.<p>But my clones are taken from a variety that flowered in the 90&#x27;s, IIRC, so there&#x27;s some confidence they won&#x27;t all flower (and immediately die) for another ~70 years.<p>The variety they&#x27;re talking about here is a mild running type (most runners are <i>very</i> rampant, and not recommended unless you&#x27;ve got containment systems in place).<p>Thailand famously had a big flowering event in the late 1980&#x27;s that killed off vast tracts of plantations.

It reminds me of cicadas, an insect with long life cycles: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Cicada#Life_cycle" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Cicada#Life_cycle</a><p>&gt; Some cicada species have much longer life cycles, such as the North American genus, Magicicada, which has a number of distinct &quot;broods&quot; 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.<p>There&#x27;s also an evolutionary theory behind why these are prime numbers: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.newyorker.com&#x2F;tech&#x2F;annals-of-technology&#x2F;the-cicadas-love-affair-with-prime-numbers" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.newyorker.com&#x2F;tech&#x2F;annals-of-technology&#x2F;the-cica...</a>

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&#x27;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.

Wow, today I am one of the lucky ten thousand. This is a beautiful bit of the natural world I had no idea about.<p>It&#x27;s wonderful to learn of something so &#x27;purely&#x27; interesting, and (now I&#x27;ve dived a little down the rabbit hole) shared amongst other species like Cicada.

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 &quot;natural&quot; population, the blossoms shouldn&#x27;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.

&gt; 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, [...]<p>What?<p>I thought bamboo is a fast growing thing, and it&#x27;s easy to grow bamboo. Just stick it into the soil in the right conditions and it&#x27;ll sprout roots and grow. (It can even be grown from seeds.)

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

That site benefited enormously from reader mode.

&gt; 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“ (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;grapee.jp&#x2F;en&#x2F;114838" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;grapee.jp&#x2F;en&#x2F;114838</a>)<p>Why don&#x27;t link the complete article instead of the japan-forward one?

New Reiwa era, bad bamboo omen. OK

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