Bamboo – The plant and its uses. Book Review
Johan Gielis
Bamboo – The plant and its uses, edited by Walter Liese and Michael Köhl, is the 10th volume In the Springer Series Tropical Forestry. In 2015 Prof. W. Liese celebrates his ninetieth birthday, and almost 65 years of his life were devoted to bamboo research. Among many honorary doctorates and professorships, one of his most prestigious awards is the Brandis Medal. Sir Dietrich Brandis (1824-1907) is considered as the father of tropical forestry, but also wrote various papers on bamboo (Liese, 1986). In his last paper Brandis (1907) wrote: „I believe I am justified to recommend the study of Bamboo to younger botanists. The main part of the work, however, must be done in countries where bamboos are indigenous, and the first operation must be to establish facts."
Prof. Liese has brought this advice into practice, with many PhD students from Asia and a lasting influence in bamboo research in many countries in Asia, Africa and South-America. Foremost however has been his focus on establishing facts through research. We all know bamboo as a fantastic plant, which could provide solutions to many challenges mankind faces in the 21st century, from providing housing to a growing population worldwide, all the way to mitigating climate change through reforestation and sustainable forestry. Without facts however, we are in the dark. This book aims to transfer knowledge and facts to younger generations.
Prof. Liese has bundled in this book much of his knowledge from 60 years of research on bamboo. His seminal work with his colleague Parameswaran on using electron microscopy to study the anatomy of bamboo culms and rhizomes, has led to a better understanding of preservation methods, increasing the lifetime of bamboo utilization, and of industrial processing methods. The chapters Properties of the Bamboo Culm and Preservation and Drying of Bamboo, written by him and his last PhD student Thi Kim Hong Tang, are highlights of the book. The final chapter on Utilization of Bamboo is quite complete, from more traditional uses in housing, the production of utensils and the use of the shoots, fruits and extractives, up to contemporary uses as bamboo parquet, bamboo-plastic composites, textiles and charcoal.
Prof. Ratan Lal Banik contributed three chapters, namely Morphology and Growth, Bamboo Silviculture and Harvesting Techniques. Also he bundles a lifelong expertise into those three very informative chapters. Although the main focus is on the Old World tropical bamboos, the detailed description of techniques and practices should be of interest to anybody involved in silviculture and agroforestry of bamboos. Pest and Diseases of Bamboos is another very informative contribution. The chapter on Priority Species however, is very short and this type of information can be found elsewhere.
The book focuses on stabilized scientific and technological knowledge and does not include ongoing research on physiology (see three chapters in this BSC volume) or DNA sequencing. Much of this research however is not stabilized yet and a lot of new results can be expected in the years and decades to come. One example is the first chapter of Lynn Clark, the leading expert on bamboo taxonomy today, describing the state of the art on Bamboo Taxonomy. The availability of molecular methods has led to many new insights in taxonomy but also raises many more questions. This is how science advances, and typically these advances are published in scientific journals. It is only when certain research areas have reached a certain maturity that it is time for a landmark book summarizing existing knowledge in a broad field. Bamboo – the plant and its uses is such a landmark book, and at the same time Prof. Liese’s legacy, and is highly recommended to everyone involved in bamboo research.
REFERENCES
Liese W. (1986) To the memory of Sir Dietrich Brandis. The Indian Forester 112 (8): 639-645.
Brandis D. (1907) Remarks on the structure of bamboo leaves.
Posted by: Wliese@aol.com
| Reply via web post | • | Reply to sender | • | Reply to group | • | Start a New Topic | • | Messages in this topic (4) |
__._,_.___
