The best quality of bamboo for rod building is of the species "Arundinaria
Amabilis" - this is the old scientific name, in reality the correct new
scientific name is "Pseudosasa
Amabilis" .
However, I often use the old term because of its widespread use in the
community of bamboo rodmakers, (the same bamboo is also called "Tonkin").
The best and larger plantations are in a relatively small area in Southern
China
(along
the Sui
River, Guangning Province) where
the
bamboo business creates large and green forests.
An exceprt from the legendary book of Hoagy Carmichael, first published in 1977.
"Over the years many different woods and bamboos have been used as material for making flyrods. Over one thousands species of bamboo have been identified but only one, a cultivated variety known as Tonkin Cane has the inherent characteristics which make it generally recognized as the best natural fibre from which to build flyrods. In spite of its name, Tonkin Cane does not come from Tonkin but from a small area about a hundred miles northwest of Canton.
In 1932 F.A.McClure, an Associate Professor of Botany at the Ligan University in Hong Kong, became interested in its unusual carachteristics and travelled up the Sui River from Canton to the area where it is grown, a twenty-five square mile oval overlapping the provinces of Kwantung and Kwangsi. McClure was taken with the Tonkin Cane that he named it Arundinaria Amabilis, the lovely bamboo."
Andy Royer (left in the picture above with Rolf Baginski in the middle)
is a bamboo
broker (here is website) from Seattle, USA.
Andy has been in the bamboo business for over 20 years and personally learned
how to select the best bamboo culms expressly for us rodbuilders. If you
want to see him in action and deepen your knowledge in bamboo rodmaking you
can have a look at his excellent documentary Green
Trout, so named because bamboo is a grass and not a plant. The documentary
covers bamboo rod making from the selection of bamboo culms, to the elaborate
making of a rod to the final casting in a river. Superb photography and excellent
storyboard. A five star rating DVD.
Anyhow, back to us. Andy told us that the agricultural bamboo business
in the US is much bigger and Andy is dealing with that, too, to make a living.
He, told us how difficult it was in the beginning to found suitable bamboo
culms of good quality for our purpose.
Nature being as it is, the "perfect" culm does not exist, each bamboo plant
has imperfections - actually, bamboo is a grass which for this species grows
up to 10-12m in just 3 months and then is harvested 3-4 years later. Besides,
there is not even unity of what rodbuilders think is a good quality culm:
some want yellow culms, some others pay more attention to the distance from
the nodes, some others want the best looking, "clean" bamboo, others prefer
heavy culms, while others again wish a mixture of all above.
Andy Royer also reminded us the historical background of the '50s, the Maoist
revolution, the following US trade embargo (1950 - 1971), the Chinese new
subdivision of the land to the people which made so that each villager of
the area where he works got about 5 acres of bamboo plantation.
I think it is noteworthy to mention that locally the Chinese villagers
consider the quality of bamboo rather differently: for them the "good" bamboo
is young, "green" bamboo, suitable for many construction purposes, while "our" selected
bamboo culms are of "low quality" because "old".Is there any competition
from Chinese bamboo rodbuilders, then, as a person from the audience asked?
No, there is no culture for fly fishing in China neither! Andy told me
that the local peasants do not understand what we are doing! A typical
cultural gap.
, by 
