I just saw this report about "bamboo-rice hybridization" in the group. I had previously asked Liu Su to write a related article on the evolution of bamboo, from which we can get a glimpse of some reasons. ————The following is the main text————When we look at language as a culture, we will find many interesting phenomena. There are more than a thousand nouns in Arabic used to refer to various varieties and different growth stages of camels. The names of fish in Japanese are equally numerous and detailed. There are dozens of collective nouns in English describing prey during hunting. These are all It reflects the differences in geographical distribution and traditional economic forms of the corresponding ethnic groups, as well as the resulting cultural characteristics. The same goes for our Chinese language. For example, "bamboo" is an important radical of Chinese characters. Many commonly used characters have the radical "bamboo", such as wait, laugh, di, guan, suan... Bamboo is not only an important economic plant for the Chinese, but also an important cultural carrier. Among the allusions about bamboo, my favorite is what Wang Huizhi, the son of the great calligrapher Wang Xizhi of the Eastern Jin Dynasty, said in "Shishuo Xinyu": "How can a day be without this king!" Perhaps at this point we are qualified to pity the Europeans. , because they had hardly seen bamboo before the 17th century. It’s no wonder they have it, because Europe doesn’t produce bamboo at all. There are now more than 50 genera and more than 800 species of bamboo in the world, with three distribution centers, namely, southeastern Asia including southern my country, tropical Africa and tropical America. Among them, Asia has the most bamboo species. In plant taxonomy, bamboos belong to the family Gramineae, which means that they are closely related to many important food crops such as wheat, rice, and corn. Indeed, those who have seen bamboo, rice and wheat can easily notice the similarities between them. For example, their stems have obvious segments, and the segments are thicker than the internodes. But there are obvious differences between bamboo and rice and wheat. The biggest difference is that most bamboos are woody, and the stems are much harder than rice and wheat. For a long time, people thought that in the Poaceae family, woody bamboo was the primitive type, and other herbaceous grasses were the evolved type. However, molecular biology research in the past decade has completely overturned this traditional concept. The ancestors of the Poaceae family were not woody, but herbaceous. A type of plant called Joinvillea that grows in Malaysia and some Pacific islands today is believed to be similar to the ancestors of the Poaceae family. They are both tall grasses that grow on the edges of tropical rainforests. The edge of the forest is an unstable habitat, where many species meet and compete brutally, causing chaos. Like people in troubled times, the ancestors of the grass family longed to live a settled life, so they had two paths for them to choose: one was to enter the forest and live in seclusion under the quiet forest; the other was to stay away from the forest and go to the vast grassland. Ride freely. The ancestors of the Poaceae family did not agree on the choice of a way out. The final result is that the two groups part ways, one goes into the forest, the other goes to the grassland. Of course, some of them resettle and choose to stay on the edge of the forest where they are suffering. Bamboo is the descendant of the group that went into the forest. Although life under the tropical rainforest is quiet, it is also very difficult. Here, the tallest trees block out a lot of sunlight, and the part that leaks out is exploited by the next taller and taller trees and shrubs on the way. By the time it reaches the ground, there is not much left. At this time, the ancestors of bamboo had several options to choose from. For example, they could betray the earth like epiphytes and bromeliads and cling to trees for more sunshine, or they could become like saprophytes and pineapples. Like big flowers and plants, they betray the green color and become servile eaters of fungi, living by begging for food from fungi. However, the bamboo ancestors were unwilling to lose their dignity. They decided to rely on their own efforts and worked hard to create their own world in the forest. So in order to compete with the lower trees, they have raised their bodies from generation to generation, from a few meters to tens of meters to tens of meters; at the same time, they have strengthened their bodies from generation to generation, using stone cell layers and lignified fiber bundles. Waiting for mechanical organizations to arm their own stems; they abandoned their previous corrupt ways and no longer had "sexual life" (flowering) every year to avoid consuming precious physical energy. In the end, many species can only bloom once in their lifetime and bear fruit. Then he died magnificently. In this way, bamboo has become a high-quality material after wood. There are news reports that southern my country has begun trial construction of high-strength modern bamboo bridges. Its mechanical properties are comparable to bridges with steel structures or reinforced concrete structures, and they are easy to build and dismantle.
The hardness of bamboo is the result of bamboo's hard work in the face of cruel natural selection. This scientific fact may also have spiritual reference value for the Chinese who have always regarded bamboo as a cultural symbol. 2007.12.19