Bamboo is known as poor man’s timber and has multiple uses. It belongs to subfamily Bambusoideae of grass family (Poaceae). There are about 1200 species of bamboo in 90 genera across the world. It has about 125 indigenous and 11 exotic species of bamboo from 23 genera (FSI, 2019). The major bamboo genera found in India are Arundinaria, Bambusa, Chimonobambusa, Dendrocalamus, Dinochloa, Gigantochloa etc.
Authentic identification of the bamboo species solely rely on the reproductive characters i.e. flowers and flower is not a usual annual phenomenon and flowering period varies widely by species, ranging from a year to 120 years. Gregarious flowering of a bamboo species takes place in vast area and all clumps dies soon after. Dried bamboo has no economic value; moreover, it is main cause of forest fire during summer season. About 20 % of total forest area is under bamboo forest
Many bamboo species exhibit cyclic flowering to tied to their biological clock. Therefore, record of flowering is one of the key factors which can be exploited for the prediction of bamboo. Robust database of flowering is required of a bamboo species for developing prediction model. Under AICRP on Bamboo, flowering records from different sources like research paper, Ph.D thesis, records of Herbaria, working plans, books, etc, were collected and all possible details like species, year of flowering , locations, collector etc. were recorded and analyzed.
A total of 1134 records for bamboo flowering database of 68 species were recorded. Highest number of records were recorded for the species Dendrocalamus strictus (158 nos.), followed Bambusa bamboos (113 nos.) Melocanna baccifera (78 nos) etc. Location wise, highest records were from Arunachal Pradesh followed by Meghalaya, Assam, Nagaland, Mizoram etc. Similarly maximum flowering incident occurred during 1885-1889 followed by 1901-1917, 1992-2010 and 2007-2013.
Database Sorting: Details such as name of species, synonyms, vernacular names, year of flowering, location, author citation etc. are included of each record. Database also provides information about species taxonomic and live images of a species for easy and authentic identification.