Food-grains of India / by A.H. Church.

  • Arthur Herbert Church
Date:
1886
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Food-grains of India / by A.H. Church. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service. The original may be consulted at London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service.

    119/200 (page 103)
    crop, it has several times proved most serviceable. General Munro considers that it was this species (H. arundinacea) which, in 1864, during one of its occasional flowerings, furnished food to upwards of 50,000 persons in Kanara. It is stated that in 1812, in Orissa, a general flowering of the bamboo prevented a famine. The grain of other kinds of bamboo is, in all probability, similar in composi- tion to that ot J^. arundinacea. The three most important species are : B.spinosa (Roxb.), growing in Bengal, Gongachora, Goraghat, Assam, Dacca, Cachar, Tenasserim, Moulmein, Mergui, Pegu ; B. tulda (Roxb.), plains of Bengal and adjoining provinces ; and B. vulgaris (Wendl), which is cultivated in many districts of India, particularly in the Western Deccan, Kolapur, Sattara, Poona, Sylhet, Cachar, Chittagong, and in the Eastern Punjab ; this last species grows also in Ceylon, where it is known as una. Young shoots of bamboo are eaten like asparagus ; they are sometimes pickled. It is a favourite fodder. The plants, or rather the stems, do not survive the seeding—at least this seems to be generally the case with the four species above named. General Munro ( Linn. Soc. Trans., xxvi., pp. 87 to 157) describes 23 species of Bambusa as well as many allied plants belonging to other genera of Bambusese. There is evidence that the grain of not a few of these has been used, or may be used, for human food.