BBC Twat attempts to measure tree

[Paddy]

BBC Twat attempts to measure tree (plant) . Didn’t they learn anything at school

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-11011352

[Mich the Tester]

Meejah Studies, innit.

[TimberWolf]

Reminds me of Jack and the Beanstalk, but it's agave, which is presumably a species of Vic Reeves plant.

[d000hg]

Would make a great way to get kids involved in maths... a practical use for trigonometry.

[TimberWolf]

2 foot a week, pah. Bamboo grows that much in a day. 1/2mm a minute, almost visible to the naked eye, or visible if you aren't looking.

[Spacecadet]

BBC Twat attempts to measure tree (plant) . Didn’t they learn anything at school

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-11011352

<sarcasm>
Surely the BBC could have got a decent sized ladder in to do the job properly!
</sarcasm>

[d000hg]

2 foot a week, pah. Bamboo grows that much in a day. 1/2mm a minute, almost visible to the naked eye, or visible if you aren't looking.

There are some amazing plants, I'm not sure if Wikipedia can be trusted but:

Bamboo is the fastest-growing woody plant on Earth; it has been measured surging skyward as fast as 121 cm (48 in) in a 24-hour period,[2] and can also reach maximal growth rate exceeding one metre (39 inches) per hour for short periods of time. Many prehistoric bamboos exceeded heights of 85 metres (279 ft)[citation needed]. Primarily growing in regions of warmer climates during the Cretaceous period, vast fields existed in what is now Asia.

1 meter per hour?! That is hard to believe, nearly 20mm/minute, although maybe "short periods of time" is a bit vague.

[NickFitz]

2 foot a week, pah. Bamboo grows that much in a day. 1/2mm a minute, almost visible to the naked eye, or visible if you aren't looking.

In WWII the Japanese would spreadeagle somebody atop a field of bamboo, lashed to stakes set in the ground. The victim would die as the bamboo grew through their body

Source: You'll Die in Singapore by Charles McCormac - I don't know if this Google Books search will work for everybody, but page 38 is the one: http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=E...pg=PP1&pg=PA38 and the OCR has misread "tropic" as "topic" (or at least it's "tropic" in my printed copy from the early fifties).

[wobbegong]

BBC Twat attempts to measure tree (plant) . Didn’t they learn anything at school

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-11011352

What's the problem? Just cut the fecker down and get yer tape measure out. Job done.

[TimberWolf]

There are some amazing plants, I'm not sure if Wikipedia can be trusted but:
1 meter per hour?! That is hard to believe, nearly 20mm/minute, although maybe "short periods of time" is a bit vague.

More on growth rate here:

"Bamboo grows really fast, doesn't it?" Yes and no and yes.

Bamboo's unusual growth habit makes this a more complex question than it might seem...But it's only once the clump has reached its full size and height, at four to five years old, that you start to see the really fast growth of individual canes during the late summer shooting season, in which shoots break through the ground and race upwards at rates of a foot a day or more to become fifty foot tall canes in just two months....

So, getting back to the question... yes, clumping bamboos do grow at a rate far exceeding that of most landscape plants, but no, a small, newly planted bamboo will not grow a foot a day, but yes, once your bamboo plants have been in the ground for several years you should be able to watch new shoots grow at the extraordinary rate of a foot or more per day. Got that?

Florida Bamboo: Common Questions and Answers