If you look at photographs of the Arashiyama Bamboo Forest on Instagram, you might come away thinking that bamboo has a bluish hue. Nope. I don't have to travel to Kyoto to study the life cycle of bamboo, as I have a mini grove of the stuff growing behind my studio. This is the time of the year when the new bamboo is bright green and growing incredibly fast. Later, as the summer months drag on, brown hues tend to predominate. As the older bamboo dies in winter, the pigment fades and the wood splits open as it dries out. In this image of new growth, I did a little image doctoring of my own, converting to monochrome in order to highlight the stem of the vine corkscrewing up the bamboo.
