FUKUOKAApril 28 (News On Japan) – In a rare botanical event, a photographer in Fukuoka captured the blooming of bamboo flowers, a phenomenon said to occur only once every 120 years.
The quiet residential area of โโSawara Ward in Fukuoka became the center of this unusual event. โI’ve never seen anything like this before,โ said the photographer, who noticed fluffy tufts of rice emerging from the bamboo knots. The bamboo, a species known as black bamboo, was planted 18 years ago and has never shown such characteristics until now.
โI thought they were insect eggs,โ the photographer admitted, referring to the unusual formations. Suspecting it might be something else, he decided to take the mysterious specimens to a botanical garden for expert analysis.
‘Ah, I see, they are indeed blooming. These are black bamboo flowers. They look like rice flowers, don’t they? They are definitely flowers,โ explains Futamata Tokuko, expert in the field of flower and green advice. She confirmed that bamboo, belonging to the grass family, blooms in the same way as rice.
Further insights were provided by Futamata, who noted: โThis black bamboo is a type of ‘hachiku’, and a mass flowering of hachiku species has begun. It was predicted that a mass boom could occur around the 30th year of the Heisei era, about 120 years since the last one.โ
According to the Forestry Research Institute, this marks a major boom for black bamboo, the first since the Meiji era. When asked why bamboo undergoes such a transformation every 120 years, researcher Kobayashi Keito admitted: โThat is the real charm and mystery of bamboo. Hopefully our research can clarify this phenomenon.โ
Source: TBS
