Bambusa multiplex 'Alphonse Karr'

hedge bamboo

Bamboos flower at infrequent intervals characteristic of each species, up to every 130 years. After setting seed, the bamboo dies, allowing the new baby bamboo plants to take their place. Far from being something looked forward to by local populations, bamboo flowering is dreaded. While it seems like watching entire bamboo forests flower at the same time might be beautiful to behold, the flowers are actually quite inconspicuous, and the thousands of fruits produced by the plants cause an explosion in the population of rats, which also begin to devour any other crops to be found near the bamboo, causing severe famine and disease. Here is a clip of news coverage from such an event that recently occurred in Mizoram, India: