Bamboo is a type of grass and is among the fastest growing plants on the planet. One Japanese species rockets skywards at a rate of a metre a day. Some bamboos can reach a lofty 35 metres in height while others are only half a metre tall. They flower en-mass, the whole population coming into bloom simultaneously. This doesn't happen every year and it may occur just once a century. Bamboo is famous as the major food source of iconic animals such as the giant panda, red panda and Madagascar's bamboo lemur. It is also economically important to humans as a building material and as food. There are 1,500 different species of bamboo, occurring naturally in every continent except Europe and Antarctica.

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