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For International Bamboo Day, every September 18, report at the Bambouseraie des Cévennes, in the south of France, where certain species of bamboo grow faster than their shadow.
We are at the entrance to the Cévennes, in the south of France, and along the valley formed by the Gardon d’Anduze appear the first chestnut trees and, less usual, bamboo. Like a piece of Asia in the Cévennes landscape. It is the Bambouseraie des Cévennes, formerly called Prafrance, the largest concentration of bamboos in Europe, created in 1856 by Eugène Mazel, a botanist, who brought his first bamboos from Asia, then other exotic plants. . Today, more than a century and a half later, more than 200 species of bamboo make up this exceptional acclimatization garden, out of the 1,500 species of bamboo found anywhere in the world, except in Antarctica.
Rodolphe Bourdin, the technical director of the Bambouseraie des Cévennes, chose to take us to the foot of the “bambouseraie champion”, Phyllostachys edulis, which rises high, very high, in the azure sky. ” These are very beautiful bamboos, we see that they have a bluish color, with very large diameters at the level of the culm. “Up to 20 centimeters in diameter for the thatch, the stem of the bamboo, which could be compared to a trunk. It is wood, very resistant, used in particular in construction.
A forest of grass
Here, at the Bambouseraie des Cévennes, it’s a real forest, over several hectares. But a forest of grass, because bamboo is grass. A tall grass, which grows at breakneck speed, faster than its shadow, to crush the competition. ” The sprout in front of us is a sprout of the yearsays Rodophe Bourdin. In two months, we started from zero, from the ground, to 18 or 20 meters. When the shoot emerges, it is exactly the same diameter as the adult bamboo. Then, it’s like a telescopic antenna that unfolds. It’s quite impressive during the growth period: when you walk past it every day, you see that the height of the bamboo is different. It can grow up to 80 centimeters per day, when the conditions are good: when there is good humidity, when the ground is warm, when the weather is nice… nature explodes! »
Bamboo is tough, and grows fast. These are undeniable qualities for an instrument of torture. It is called the bamboo chair, close to the torture of the pal – we let you imagine… The bamboo chair was used for centuries in Asia, and more recently during the Vietnam War on American prisoners of war.
Deadly Bloom
But bamboo has other qualities! It displays a nice ecological performance by absorbing twice as much CO2 as a tree – an ally in the climate crisis. And its rhizomes quickly spread underground to produce other bamboo shoots year after year.
Bamboo is a herb that flowers only once in its life, and it happens at the same time for the same species all over the world. ” It’s like a grass when it spikes, explains Rodolphe Bourdin. When we say flowering, we don’t really see flowers. But suddenly, the bamboo runs out and dies. And there, it is the drama for the pandas who feed almost exclusively on bamboo. A few years ago, in the province of Sichuan in China, the pandas found themselves very deprived when all the bamboos flowered and died at the same time.
“Why do pandas only eat bamboo? »
That’s right: why does this adorable carnivorous animal from the bear family eat 99% of a plant? Millions of years ago, pandas became quasi-herbivorous because bamboo was available year-round and ignored by other herbivorous animals. Their digestive system is however not adapted, since they are originally carnivorous, and they must swallow a lot of bamboo to recover the necessary proteins: 12 kilos of bamboo per day on average. They have to spend the day eating and then go to bed.