This fast-growing woody plant was first noted in English as a result of two voyages. Jan Huyghen van Linschoten was a Dutch merchant who spent much of his life outside his home country; four years in Spain, three years in Portugal and then six years with Portuguese ships including visits to the Arctic, Africa and Asia. His chronicle of these journeys was almost immediately translated into English and published in 1598 as Discours of Voyages into ye Easte & West Indies. The book includes a description of “a reed as big as a man’s leg which is called bambus”.
The following year the story was taken up by Richard Hakluyt, England’s first real compiler of travel literature. While not a great traveller himself, Hakluyt was a diligent recorder of the experiences of others. His compilation of various English voyages The principal navigations, voyages, traffiques and discoveries of the English nation aimed to promote British colonial ambitions, which at this point in time lagged behind those of the Portuguese and Spanish rivals.
Hakluyt writes of houses made of canes called bamboo, giving an early insight into the remarkable flexibility of the plant. The speed of bamboo’s growth sets it apart, and where an oak tree may take well over a century to grow to maturity, bamboo reaches harvesting height within three years. Its practical uses extend to housing, food, furniture and paper. The world bamboo market is estimated to be USD 10 billion and the World Bamboo Organisation believes this figure could double within five years.
In Asia, bamboo is renowned as a healing plant, and has been used in medicines for over 5,000 years. Traditional Indian medicines use it to treat respiratory illnesses and in ancient China it was a customary cure for infection, but in 1955 the healing properties of Bamboo were used in a different way by Hollywood. The film “House of Bamboo” was filmed in Tokyo starring both American and Japanese actors. For many Americans this movie offered the first positive images of relationships between the two nationalities, and was seen as an important step in the cultural reconciliation that followed World War Two. Curing ills, building houses and building bridges, it’s not surprising bamboo is often referred to as a “miracle plant”.
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