BAMBOO

[cadobhik39]

During my five month-long visits to China, spending most of my time in very rural areas, I have seen innumerable uses for bamboo. It is a familiar food, large bamboo is used for roof gutters, water pipes, as scaffolding on buildings 10-floors tall, with woven bamboo mats for the builders to walk on. Paper made from bamboo is well known from early

Comments

[lescab]

It's good that the socks are made from a mix of bamboo, polyamide and elastine. Because pure bamboo textile is very "fluid", it doesn't keep shape.

I'm a knitter and I like bamboo yarn very much, because it's very silky and soft. But pullovers from this yarn do not keep shape absolutely! So I have to mix bamboo yarn with cotton.

[cadobhik39]

Thanks for the technical information - very interesting. I might buy some more socks and consider various other items too (the free socks and catalogue came with the offer of a 15% reduction for first purchase). I did not know about bamboo-rich knitting yarns; an am,amazingly versatile plant.

I became familiar with large bamboo species in China - Phylostachys pubescens. This emerges from the soil about 8cm diameter, it can punch through concrete or lift a car if parked over it. It will grow rapidly to about 5m then send out thin branches.
I say "rapid" growth and this has to be seen to be believed. We parked in one location in Tianmu Shan Nature Reserve, Zhejiang Province and returned to the car about 5hrs later - it was surrounded by 8cm P.pubescens shoots that in our absence had emerged from the soil and grown 30-40cm. There are hundreds of species of "bamboo"