Bamboo can grow as fast as three feet per day! When it comes to upward growth, bamboo is the fastest growing plant on Earth, able to shoot up as tall as a 10 story building in just 8 weeks, giving pandas a new meaning to the term “fast food.” The key to this absurdly fast growth is that, despite its bamboozling height and sturdiness, bamboo isn’t a tree – it's a very special grass. Yup, that's right, bamboo, along with wheat, rice, and other grasses is a member of the Poaceae family. Unlike trees, which grow taller through the slow process of cell division, bamboo-like tall grasses - just inflate the cells it created before the shoot came out of the ground.
Each new bamboo shoot is part of a larger system of roots and canes that works like a plumbing system, pumping water into the new shoot’s cells. The cells release a special chemical that make their cell walls more flexible (and inflatable) and the orientation of the strands that make up these walls guide this fast growth straight up. While all grasses grow via the same cell elongation process, an unkempt lawn won’t end up towering over your house as a bamboo grove would. That’s because, unlike most grasses whose cell walls thin out and weaken as they stretch, bamboo can deposit more layers to its cell walls, keeping the shoot sturdy enough to withstand strong winds even as it grows to immense heights. It’s developed this ability to keep pace with the trees in the forests bamboo calls home, allowing it to get the necessary sunlight to supercharge the growth of even taller shoots next year.
This firmly plants bamboo of the House Poaceae, as the rightful Queen of the Forests, the Unbent, the Breaker of Records, and Mother - well, at least Nourisher - of Pandas. And if like bamboo, you’re all about moving fast, then you should get read interesting books.
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