In the fly-fishing world, bamboo rods are an enduring foundation, and Morgan mastered this old art.

FORBES: Tom Morgan: Tragedy and Triumph

Other Asian species which depend on bamboo for food or for shelter include the red panda and the world's second smallest bat, the lesser bamboo bat (Tylonycteris pachypus), which is 3.5 cm (1.4 inches) long.

BBC: NEWS | Science/Nature | UN alert on threat to wild bamboo

He chews on a bamboo shoot and eyes us with world-weary boredom, as if we were tiresome in-laws.

FORBES: On The Cover/Top Stories

Guccio and his descendants became world famous for the bamboo-handled handbag sported by the likes of Jackie Onassis and the trademark loafers worn by Frank Sinatra's set.

ECONOMIST: Luxury goods

In other news, pedal-powered transportation geared up for the future as we showcased a chain-less hybrid bike with an out-of-this-world design and a molded bamboo bike that is grown from the ground up.

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Across the fields and beyond a humming slash of motorway, the enormous bamboo stalk of Taipei 101, the second-tallest building in the world, stood like a punctuation mark.

BBC: Here be dragons

But from planting the bamboo in the Zambian forests to shipping the bicycles to the concrete urban jungles across the world, the process of manufacturing the bikes is far from an easy task.

CNN: Made in Africa: Bamboo bikes put Zambian business on right track