ABSTRACT
A generalized flowering cycle for one of the 500 to 600 species of large bamboos starts with the germination of a large, even-aged monospecific cohort of seed on terrain occupied immediately previously by the now-dead parents of the cohort. Several species of bamboo may occupy the same habitat but have quite different interfloral periods. The flowers of bamboo are, themselves, not exceptional grass flowers, except that a bamboo culm may bear tens of thousands of flowers. Plants with a life cycle like that range from mid-latitudes and the highelevation tropics to the subtropics, and from rainforests to extremely seasonal tropical deciduous forests. The large bamboos with long interfloral periods appear to be obligatorily outcrossed and wind-pollinated, but closer examination may well encounter more cases of pollination by insects. There is no way that an individual bamboo plant can extract a reliable cue for flowering at regular many-year intervals from the environment.
