Bamboos are of notable economic and cultural significance in East Asia, Southeast Asia, and South Asia, being used for building materials, as a food source, and as a versatile raw product. Bamboo has many uses, mainly in construction (scaffolding, roofing, and flooring), furniture, biofuel, food, fabrics, paper, cloth, ornamental garden planting, charcoal, and environmental characteristics, such as a large carbon sink and good phytoremediation option, improving soil structure and soil erosion.
Bamboo has the highest growth rate of all tropical plants. Various industrial applications of bamboos include charcoal production, cottage industries, medicinal products, handicrafts, pulp and paper, wood substitutes, and food production. Moreover, bamboo is a highly renewable resource in the socio-economic and ecological-climatic-functional context with more than 1,500 recorded uses. The bamboos of North America are found in the Eastern and Southeastern United States, from New Jersey south to Florida and west to Texas.
The American Bamboo Society has members living throughout the U.S. and in many other countries and has successfully introduced many new species of bamboos in the U.S. As long as the climate is right, bamboo grows in nearly any type of reasonably fertile well-drained soil. It requires little maintenance and is relatively drought-tolerant, although it performs better with regular irrigation. Although bamboo is a great sustainable material, it has many disadvantages. One major disadvantage of bamboo is its poor resistance to fungi and bacteria.
Bamboos need a lot of water but also need well-drained soil. While it is necessary to saturate the entire planting area when growing running bamboos, one can restrict watering for clumping types to the area around the base of the plant. Moreover, bamboos are expensive mostly because they are difficult to propagate and are slow growers. The larger the specimen, the more expensive it was because it took more time and care to get it to that size.
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