Bamboo grove: Hokoku-ji

When I step into the bamboo grove that vigorously absorbs the bright sunlight and continues to grow, I always feel like I am inside the body of a giant creature and sense that the towering bamboo trees around me are silently emitting their intensive life force and strong desire for growth. 

A bamboo grove as a whole is a single living organism in itself, with the green tall trunks interconnected by a huge network of underground stems. A bamboo grove originates as a single bamboo sprout, that grows one underground stem after another to form a single extensive grove collectively.

A bamboo tree is evergreen and never loses its leaves in the winter. This allows bamboo trees to continue storing energy through photosynthesis in the sunlight coming from the cloudy winter sky and to have tough growing force year-round. 

Bamboo trees keep sharing the nutrients for growth through underground stems interconnected with each other. At its peak of growth, especially in summer, bamboo trees grow 80 to 100 centimeters per day, reaching a height of almost 20 meters in less than two months.