It is said that bamboo belong to grass family... Then, why it isn't belong to tree family?

Question

When I was in high school, we studied all about bamboo. I'm really wondering why there's no explanation in the book we used before if why bamboo belong to grass family. I did asked my teacher, in front of the principal but he failed to answer me. Could you be of help for me to be able to find out why?

Answer 1

Bamboo belongs to a classification of plants called the monocots- these are mostly grasses and as such bamboo is considered a grass. Trees are usually dicots. The mono/dicot classification refers to the small early leaves present when a plant germinates.

In terms of anatomy, the internal structures of the plants differ drastically as well.

If I were you I would look up monocotyledon and dicotyledon on wikipedia.org.

Answer 2

The fastest growing plant Bamboo is not a tree, it is a giant grass. Some species grow four feet in one day! Bamboo reaches full height in one growth spurt of about two months. When bamboo is harvested, the root system is unharmed and healthy, ready to produce more shoots, just like a grass lawnBamboo timber can be harvested every year after 7 years, compared to 30 to 50 years for trees. With 10-30% annual increase in biomass versus 2-5% for trees, bamboo can yield 20 times more timber than trees on the same area. Bamboo can be selectively harvested annually and regenerates without replanting..

Answer 3

Characters of a plant family are fundamentally based on the floral features.

To put it differently ; classification of plants ( Taxonomy) is based on the floral or reproductive characters of a plant and not on its vegetative features.

You may wonder why is it so ? Read further.

Morphological feature of vegetative organs( Root,stem and leaves) may undergo a change according to the environmental conditions.

For example- In deserts ; Cacti and euphorbias appear identical when you examine their veg. features as they have to cope up with severe drought and employ same measures to overcome it.

But their floral characters are vastly different and do not change. So one belongs to family Cactaceae and other to Euphorbiaceae!

System of classification that is based upon 'stable' characters or as they say 'conservative' ( resistance to change)characters will be a sound system of classification!

Now come back to Bamboo.

Vegetatively ( Especially stem) this giant grass does not appear to be a grass at all ! It shatters our idea of grass when we look at it.

Still , our disbelief notwithstanding , the flowers of bamboo confirm to the requierment of flowers that belong to Poaceae family , the grass family ( Old name is Gramineae family).

Answer 4

ya bamboo belongs to grass family...
It is the fastes growing angiosperm

Answer 5

Bamboo has neither bark nor branches.

Answer 6

The idiosyncrasies of plant life!