User:Bamboo Identifier

How can I identify a species of bamboo? What do I need to collect? 2 years ago I visited a village near Hangzhou, China, where a dozen families specialize in making bamboo flutes. I noticed that the soil is thin and shally there. The bamboos that grow in the hills are thin, at most slightly over 1 inch in diameter, and less in inside diameter (but they are 15-25 feet tall). They do have one long section between nodes, usually the 3rd or 4th on a culm, that is unsually long, namely 12-13 inches in length between two nodes, thus ideal for making flutes. This means that flute makers can use this length without having to drill out nodes. The denser the fibres the harder the bamboo, and better the sound quality; in other words, bamboos grown in fertile soil and plenty of water will be too fat and have loosely packed fibres. When the bamboo is "ripe" the flute makers tell me, the groove at the node turns black, it is then ready for harvest. The bamboo is cut and longest joint is dried in the sun and cured for 3-5 years before it is made into flutes. This is a renewal resource as the bamboos send out shoots every year. A drought year is considered good, because the bamboo fibres will be denser. I have a suspicion that bamboos probably grow a bit from the inside out, pushing against the hardened outer skin and packing the fibres tighter against each other.

   They also make flutes out of a kind of purple bamboo which has short joints so they have to drill out the nodes anyway.  These flutes have different tone quality.
   Really thin culms, no bigger than a pencil, are sent out to be made into stems for calligraphy brushes.