Bamboo - another Silk Carving©

This is also not a photo from a natural bloom or blossom but a silk carving© of a plant that has many faces. More about the making of a silk carving you can read here

Bamboo serves many purposes besides being a multi-facetted garden plant, looking marvellous and being food for animals.
Bamboo is used mainly in Asia as construction material for whole houses and as scuffolding for multi storage buildings. Who has ever seen these amazing suffoldings reaching far into the sky knows what qualities the stems of this plant has. Additionally growing very fast and in multiple forms gives this plant a special importance.

In other parts of this world bamboo is used for building whole ships, for floors and furniture, decoration and even for dishes and clothing. I think there is no plant with more applications than bamboo besides being eco friendly, non-toxic, renewable.

But there is one downside to this plant also: When it blooms the plant dies and animals who feed exclusively on the leaves and sprouts of bamboo are in great danger of starving as it can happen with the big panda bears in China.

Every few years the bamboo starts to bloom and it does not do it in small groups but in whole areas at the same time. Which means that the bamboo dies in large patches. The pandas' natural habitats have become very constraint due to the growing of Chinas's population and cities and the bears don't have the chance to move from one territory into another any more because they cannot cover big distances. So the fate of these magnificent animals seems to be doomed.

Although China has initiated several breeding programs and plans to release the bears, who have been born in captivity, into the wild, I doubt that this will be a success. Too much territory has already been destroyed. And when there is no habitat to live in what sense does it make to increase the population?

"Bamboo", 59" x 15", Silk Carving