Reading Passage 1
Wonder Plant
The wonder plant with an uncertain future
More than a billion people rely on bamboo for either their shelter or income, while many endangered species depend on it for their survival. Despite its apparent abundance, a new report says that many species of bamboo may be under serious threat.
Section A
Every year, during the rainy season, the mountain gorillas of Central Africa migrate to the foothills and lower slopes of the Virunga Mountains to graze on bamboo. For the 650 or so that remain in the wild, it’s a vital food source. Although they eat almost 150 types of plants, as well as various insects and other invertebrates, at this time of year bamboo accounts for up to 90 percent of their diet. Without it, says Ian Redmond, chairman of the Ape Alliance, their chances of survival would be significantly reduced.
Gorillas aren’t the only locals keen on bamboo. For the people who live close to the Virungas, it’s a valuable and versatile raw material used for building houses and making household items such as mats and baskets. But in the past 100 years or so, resources have come under increasing pressure as populations have exploded and large areas of bamboo forest have been cleared to make way for farms and commercial plantations.
Section B
Sadly, this isn’t an isolated story. All over the world, the ranges of many bamboo species appear to be shrinking, endangering the people and animals that depend on them. But despite bamboo’s importance, we know surprisingly little about it. A recent report published by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) and the International Network for Bamboo and Rattan (INBAR) has revealed just how profound our ignorance of global bamboo resources is, particularly in relation to conservation.
There are almost 1,600 recognized species of bamboo, but the report concentrated on the 1,200 or so woody varieties distinguished by the strong stems, or culms, that most people associate with this versatile plant. Of these, only 38 “priority species”—identified for their commercial value—have been the subject of any real scientific research, and this has focused mostly on matters relating to their viability as a commodity.
This problem isn’t confined to bamboo. Compared to the work carried out on animals, the science of assessing the conservation status of plants is still in its infancy. “People have only started looking hard at this during the past 10–15 years, and only now are they getting a handle on how to go about it systematically,” says Dr. Valerie Kapos, one of the report’s authors and a senior adviser in forest ecology and conservation to the UNEP.
Section C
Bamboo is a type of grass. It comes in a wide variety of forms, ranging in height from 30 centimetres to more than 40 metres. It is also the world’s fastest-growing woody plant; some species can grow more than a metre in a day.
Bamboo’s ecological role extends beyond providing food and habitat for animals. It tends to grow in stands made up of groups of individual plants that grow from root systems known as rhizomes. Its extensive rhizome systems, which lie in the top layers of the soil, are crucial in preventing soil erosion. There is also growing evidence that bamboo plays an important part in determining forest structure and dynamics.
“Bamboo’s pattern of mass flowering and mass death leaves behind large areas of dry biomass that attract wildfire,” says Kapos. “When these burn, they create patches of open ground within the forest far bigger than would be left by a fallen tree.” Patchiness helps preserve diversity because certain plant species do better during the early stages of regeneration when there are gaps in the canopy.
Section D
However, bamboo’s most immediate significance lies in its economic value. Modern processing techniques mean that it can be used in a variety of ways—for example, as flooring and laminates. One of the fastest-growing bamboo products is paper: 25 percent of paper produced in India is made from bamboo fibre, and in Brazil, 100,000 hectares of bamboo are grown for its production.
Of course, bamboo’s main function has always been in domestic applications, and as a locally traded commodity, it’s worth about US$4.5 billion annually. Because of its versatility, flexibility, and strength (its tensile strength compares to that of some steel), it has traditionally been used in construction. Today, more than one billion people worldwide live in bamboo houses.
Bamboo is often the only readily available raw material for people in many developing countries, says Chris Stapleton, a research associate at the Royal Botanic Gardens. “Bamboo can be harvested from forest areas or grown quickly elsewhere, and then converted simply without expensive machinery or facilities,” he says. “In this way, it contributes substantially to poverty alleviation and wealth creation.”
Section E
Given bamboo’s value in economic and ecological terms, the picture painted by the UNEP report is all the more worrying. But keen horticulturists may spot an apparent contradiction here. Those who have followed the recent vogue for cultivating exotic species in their gardens will point out that if it isn’t kept in check, bamboo can cause real problems.
“In a lot of places, the people who live with bamboo don’t perceive it as being endangered in any way,” says Kapos. “In fact, a lot of bamboo species are actually very invasive if they’ve been introduced.” So why are so many species endangered?
There are two separate issues here, says Ray Townsend, vice president of the British Bamboo Society and arboretum manager at the Royal Botanic Gardens. “Some plants are threatened because they can’t survive in the habitat—they aren’t strong enough or there aren’t enough of them, perhaps. But bamboo can take care of itself. It is strong enough to survive if left alone. What is under threat is its habitat.”
It is the physical disturbance that is the threat to bamboo, says Kapos. “When forest goes, it is converted into something else: there isn’t anywhere for forest plants such as bamboo to grow if you create a cattle pasture.”
Section F
Around the world, bamboo species are routinely protected as part of forest ecosystems in national parks and reserves, but there is next to nothing that protects bamboo in the wild for its own sake. However, some small steps are being taken to address this situation. The UNEP–INBAR report will help conservationists establish effective measures aimed at protecting valuable wild bamboo species.
Townsend, too, sees the UNEP report as an important step forward in promoting the cause of bamboo conservation. “Until now, bamboo has been perceived as a second-class plant. When you talk about places such as the Amazon, everyone always thinks about the hardwoods. Of course, these are significant, but there is a tendency to overlook the plants they are associated with, which are often bamboo species. In many ways, it is the most important plant known to man. I can’t think of another plant that is used so much and is so commercially important in so many countries.”
He believes that the most important first step is to get scientists into the field. “We need to go out there, look at these plants and see how they survive, and then use that information to conserve them for the future.”
Reading Passage 2
Children’s Literature
Stories and poems aimed at children have an exceedingly long history. Lullabies, for example, were sung in Roman times, and a few nursery games and rhymes are almost as ancient. Yet, as far as written literature is concerned, while there were stories in print before 1700 that children often seized upon—such as translations of Aesop’s fables, fairy tales, popular ballads, and romances—these were not specifically aimed at young people. The only genuinely child-oriented literature at that time consisted of a few instructional works to help with reading and general knowledge, along with the occasional puritanical tract intended as a moral aid. As a result, the only option for keen child readers was to read adult literature. This still occurs today, particularly with adult thrillers or romances that include more exciting, graphic content than typically found in literature for younger audiences.
By the middle of the 18th century, there were enough eager young readers—and enough parents willing to support their interest—for publishers to begin specializing in children’s books whose primary aim was pleasure rather than education or morality. In Britain, a London merchant named Thomas Boreham produced Cajanus, The Swedish Giant in 1742, while the more famous John Newbery published A Little Pretty Pocket Book in 1744. Its contents—rhymes, stories, children’s games, and a free gift (“a ball and a pincushion”)—in many ways anticipated the lucky-dip style of children’s annuals in the 20th century. It is a tribute to Newbery’s flair that he discovered a winning formula so quickly, one that was pirated almost immediately in America.
Such pleasing levity, however, was not to last. Influenced by Rousseau—whose Émile (1762) declared that all books for children, except Robinson Crusoe, were a dangerous diversion—contemporary critics insisted that children’s literature should be instructive and uplifting. Prominent among them was Mrs. Sarah Trimmer, whose magazine The Guardian of Education (1802) featured the first regular reviews of children’s books. She condemned fairy tales for their violence and absurdity; her own stories, Fabulous Histories (1786), featured talking animals that were always models of sense and decorum.
Even so, the moral story for children was always undercut by the way children could draw out entertainment from even the sternest moralist. But the greatest blow to didactic children’s literature came from an unlikely source: early 19th-century interest in folklore. Nursery rhymes, selected by James Orchard Halliwell for a folklore society in 1842, and a collection of fairy stories by the scholarly Grimm brothers—swiftly translated into English in 1823—quickly became popular with the young. These tales rapidly went through new editions, each more child-focused than the last. From this point on, younger children could expect stories written specifically for their age group and life experience.
The reading preferences of older children were often shaped not by the availability of specialized children’s literature, but by access to books containing characters—such as young people or animals—they could relate to, or plotlines involving exploration and adventure, which did not demand adult maturity or understanding.
The final apotheosis of literary childhood as something to be protected from unpleasant reality came with the rise of child-centred bestsellers in the late 1930s, focused on pure entertainment and escapism. In Britain, authors like Enid Blyton and Richmal Crompton depicted children enjoying unlikely adventures, always secure in the knowledge that nothing truly bad would happen to them. The fact that World War II broke out during the peak of Blyton’s popularity is barely acknowledged in the self-enclosed world of her stories. A reaction against such dreamworlds was inevitable after the war, coinciding with the growth of paperback sales, children’s libraries, and a new spirit of social and moral concern. Encouraged by committed publishers and progressive librarians, writers began to explore new themes and shift their plots from the middle-class settings favored by adult patrons to more diverse contexts.
Critical emphasis during this evolution has been divided. Some believed the most important task was to eliminate the social prejudices and exclusivity previously found in children’s literature. Others focused on the positive achievements of contemporary children’s books. That these works are now often recommended to both adult and child readers reflects a 19th-century belief: that children’s literature can be shared across generations, rather than serving as a barrier between childhood and the necessary journey toward adult understanding.