Bamboo flooring - natures hard grass from Grasswood Bamboo Flooring

Bamboo is truly one of the earth's most remarkable resources. Amongst the fastest growing plants on earth, bamboo is classified botanically a grass. With over a thousand documented species (the exact number is unknown), bamboo has a long history in the Asia regions and has a special place in the cultures and everyday lives of millions of people around the world.

Renowned for its durability, resistance to pest, incredible self propagating capacity and long admired for it elegance and beauty, bamboo has been and continues to be used on a daily basis in an almost unbelievable diverse range applications. From food to eating and cooking utensils, decoration to construction, bamboo has inspired poets and tested the skills of artists attempting capture its charm and elegance.

The bamboo used in Grasswood Bamboo Flooring is known as Mao Zhu in China, Moso in Japan and is technically referred to as Phyllostachys pubescens. This species of bamboo is preferred for the manufacture of floors due to it strength, hardness, evenness of colour and its remarkable growth rate (up to a metre a day in its most vigourous growth period). Whilst it can grow up to 20 metres tall, our bamboo is cut at around 2 metres which takes between just five and seven years depending on climatic conditions. The reason the farmers cut at this stage is that it has been found that this is when the cell structures of the canes (known as culms) reach their greatest strength and are most stable. After this time the cell structure slowly weakens. It should be noted that Pandas do not eat Mao Bamboo.

Grasswood Bamboo Flooring Mao Bamboo is a 'running' species meaning that it sends out 'runners' (known as rhizomes) horizontally under the ground and sends up the shoots that become the 'canes' (known as culms). Each rhizome can run over a hundred metres and established groves can consist of kilometres of interwoven rhizomes that bind the solid so well that it can reduce or even prevent erosion. A single Mao Bamboo 'plant' (known as a clump) can produce up to 30 kilometres of useable pole in it's life time.

Some interesting bamboo facts:

• A sixty foot tree cut for market takes 60 years to replace. A sixty foot bamboo cut for market takes 59 days to replace.
• Over one billion people in the world live in bamboo houses.
• The world trade in bamboo and rattan is currently estimated at 5 billion US dollars every year.
• Thomas Edison's first successful incandescent lamp (light bulb) used a filament made of carbonised bamboo. It was patented in 1880. This light bulb still burns today in the Smithsonian Museum in Washington DC.
• Thomas Edison also used bamboo as rebar for the reinforcement of his swimming pool. To this day, the pool has never leaked.
• Alexander Graham Bell used bamboo for the first phonograph needle.
• Bamboo survived the atomic bomb at Hiroshima and provided the first re-greening after the blast in 1945.
• With a tensile strength superior to mild steel (withstands up to 52,000 pounds of pressure psi) and a weight-to-strength ratio surpassing that of graphite, bamboo is the strongest growing woody plant on earth. There is a suspension bridge in China 250 yards long, 9 foot wide and rests entirely on bamboo cables fastened over the water. It doesn't have a single nail or piece of iron in it. Used in ladders, scaffolding and construction, bamboo is twice as stable as oak, walnut and teak.
• Bamboo is the fastest growing plant on this planet and provides the best canopy for the greening of degraded lands. (Some species of Bamboo grow as much as 4 feet a day). Its stands release 35% more oxygen than equivalent stands of trees. Bamboo can also lower light intensity and protects against ultraviolet rays.
• Bamboo has thousands of uses including aeroplane "skins", aphrodisiacs, blinds, brushes, crafts, desalination filters, diesel fuel, fly fishing poles, flooring, food, furniture, medicine, musical instruments, ornaments, paper, rope, scaffolding, umbrellas, walking sticks, wind chimes and many, many, more.
• Bamboo is harvested and replenished with no impact to the environment. It can be selectively harvested annually and is capable of complete regeneration without need to replant. Bamboo is an enduring natural resource and provides income, food, and housing to over 2.2 billion people.