This paper comes about as a consequence of a CALLout from Launceston City Council's URBANforester asking city residents for feedback. In order to provide this there was a form to complete as a means of determining the FORMfiller's preferences for "tree species" to be planted on the city's verges.
Essentially that is 'trees' within streetscapes and the city's 'GREENING' policy.
Feedback to the feedback offered was adverse. The observation that there were many species of "bamboo" that would (could!?) have utility drew a rather quick and somewhat antithetic response. In Australia, and more so in Tasmania, and even more so in antipodean Launceston, the lack of enthusiasm for bamboo is almost predictable.
On the grounds of 'appropriateness and placedness', common denominators often get to be assumed – and subjectively assessed sometimes.
Even though not stated overtly in THEgreening strategy it is clear that in Australian urban CULTURALlandscapes bamboo is an unimagined component of GREENINGstrategies. The plant per se is simply unwelcome. Moreover, that is to the point of 'bamboo', of any species, irrespective of its utility, being imagined negatively and even as a weed in some jurisdictions.
Bamboo is the fastest growing plant on the planet and a sequester of carbon par excellence. What's not to love?
On the available evidence, the earliest documented uses of bamboo by humanity dates back roughly 7,000 years in China. There and elsewhere since, bamboo was/is used for construction, tools and food. Evidence from the Neolithic period includes woven bamboo utensils. Bamboo's versatility as a material for everything from building to weapons has ensured its continued use throughout history.
Looking ahead there is good reason continue to use bamboo in the context of CULTURALlandscaping. In the context of LANDliteracy in Europe 'woodlands' were understood as coppices an area in which the trees or shrubs are periodically cut back to ground level to stimulate growth and provide firewood, timber, etc. In China and other Eastern 'nations' bamboo occupied this niece in CULTURALlandscaping.
Despite all this, fast growing trees like the willows and poplars in the context of LANDlitercy – [1] - [2] – along with bamboo are very poorly understood in their antipodean context.
Launceston becomes an interesting case study where a plant, a natural resource, might be rejected or embraced based upon belief systems to do with 'place, placedness and resourcefulness' in the context of LANDlitercy, and 'elsewhereness'.
Even if 'Launceston' per se is not to be a vector of any kind, it is possible to imagine that bamboo might well become a welcomed plant in placemaking in the antipodes. No doubt, there is yet to be many PhD theses yet to be written about interrogating a plant's utility, the making of a place, and placedness.
Bamboo is ever likely to find a place in the discourses of academe if not on the streets of Launceston a POSTcolonial outpost in antipodean lutruwitaTASMANIA.
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