Flowering Bamboo

Bamboo flowering is an impressive sight but it doesn't happen often, in fact many bamboo can take from 65 years all the way to 130 years to flower and then they all flower at the same time regardless of geographic locations or climatic conditions, then it all dies and we still don't know why this is.

 

Photo: Mogens Engelund

There are two main theories about why this happens. Firstly, the predator satiation hypothesis, the idea is that by flooding the area with fruit even if large amounts are eaten there will still be seeds left, by having a flowering cycle longer than the lifespan of the rodents, bamboos can control animal populations by causing starvation during the period between flowering events. The death of the adult is due to lack of resources, as it would be better for the parents to pour all there resources in to creating a larger seed crop than to keep energy for their own regrowth.

Photo: Stéfan Le Dû

The second theory is the fire cycle hypothesis, this hypothesis thinks that the dead bamboo create a large fuel load, a fine target for lightning strikes, increasing the chance of wildfire, hopefully clearing the way for  new bamboo.

Photo:  Casey Yee

But both theories have been disputed, the predator satiation theory does not account for the flowering cycle being 10 times longer than the life of the rodents. The fire cycle theory is considered to be wrong by some scientists because of a lack of precedent for anything using something unpredictable like lightning to increase its chance of survival.

Source: Flowering Bamboo