Question

What is significant with regard to flowering in bamboo? Why?

Answer 1

Hint:-Bamboo blossom is a naturally occurring phenomenon one where bamboos grow and are hanging with bamboo seeds in a place. This is often observed in China, Myanmar and India.

Complete step-by-step solution:-
- Bamboos are weeds belonging to the Gramineae family. The main thing with regard to bamboo flowering is that after seed setting, flowering bamboo still dies. Bamboos typically have a lifecycle of around 40 to 80 years, varying from species to species. New bamboos usually grow up from bamboo shoots at the roots. They will begin to blossom at infrequent intervals for most species.
- If moisture or nutrition changes in the soil in such a way that the plants have trouble growing, they may begin to bloom. Flowers grow fruit (called 'bamboo rice' in parts of India and China) after blossoming. Following this, the forest of bamboo dies. Since a bamboo forest typically grows from a single bamboo, bamboo death takes place in a wide area.
- Large quantities of seeds are produced by flowering, usually suspended from the ends of the branches. Such seeds give birth to a new generation of plants which, in appearance, may be identical to those preceding flowering, or may produce new cultivars with different characteristics, such as the presence or absence of stripes or other changes in the coloration of the culms.
- This is because monocarpic flowering activity is displayed by bamboos. An unusual feature of monocarpic flowering is death after flowering and it is found in members of the grass family. Thus, in their life cycle, bamboo plants bloom only once.
- After their fruiting, the death of the bamboo plants means the local people lose their construction material, and the huge increase in bamboo fruit contributes to a rapid increase in populations of rodents. If the number of rodents increases, all food available, including grain fields and preserved food, is consumed, often resulting in famine. These rats also can spread dangerous diseases, such as typhus, typhoid, and bubonic plague, which, as the rodents grow in size, can reach epidemic proportions.

Note:- Both plants of the same stock of this genus flower at the same time, irrespective of variations of geographical locations or climatic conditions, and then die. The lack of environmental effect on flowering time indicates the presence in each cell of the plant of some kind of "alarm clock" that signals the cessation of vegetative growth and the transfer of all energy to flower development. As well as the evolutionary cause behind it, this process is still largely a mystery.