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A study has shed interesting light on flowering in Melocanna baccifera, a tropical bamboo species that has fascinated researchers for its association with the occurrence of ‘bamboo death,’ ‘rat foods’ and famines in northeast India

Highlights

• It detected a correlation between the sugar content in the fruit of Melocanna baccifera and the frenzied feeding and population boom in rats during ‘Mautam’, the cyclical, mass bamboo flowering that occurs once in 48 years
• Once bamboo fruit is exhausted, famine follows as the rats move on to consume local crops, notably in the Northeast Indian state of Mizoram.
• It is called as ‘Muli’ in northeast India

Melocanna baccifera

• It is one of two bamboo species belonging to the Melocanna genus.
• Native: Bangladesh, Myanmar, India, and Thailand
• It grows in clumps composed of many well-spaced culms