Bamboo is a favorite tattoo design motif for individual seeking to have large parts of their anatomy covered with skin ink. In tattoo scenes which feature creatures like tigers and dragons, bamboo is a popular backdrop, used in a similar fashion to design elements like smoke, fire, clouds and water. Bamboo gives a tattoo an authentically Asian feel, its segmented stalks and long leaves instantly recognizable all around the world.
For centuries, of course, indigenous tattoo artists in tropical regions would have likely applied their ink with bamboo implements, a practice still employed in Samoa, Japan, Thailand, & Borneo. As a tattoo motif, bamboo designs may symbolize the best of this amazing plant's qualities. Bamboo represents strength, stability & durability; and perhaps even more importantly, a long and fruitful life. In many places on earth, bamboo is associated with the eternal cycle of life, death & rebirth. Bamboo is an extremely hardy plant, capable of flourishing with astonishing vigor and vitality, qualities prized in many cultures.
Bamboo is actually a grass with tall, slim, segmented, cane-like stalks and long, slender, tapering leaves. It is native to Asia, India, and parts of Australia and Africa. The canes possess such great tensile strength that in Asia they're used in scaffolding instead of aluminum or steel. Bamboo is reputed to be the only plant able to withstand a hurricane. From medicine to tools, from food products to construction and landscaping, bamboo has found many important roles in human activities. Music, arts and crafts, and fabrics and toys all benefit from bamboo's unique qualities.
