Five years of roots

These canes are moso bamboo, filmed in Japan looking straight up. The species has a habit that sounds made up: after planting, it can spend up to five years without showing above ground. Not one shoot.

What it does down there can’t be seen: it weaves roots. And when it comes up, it doesn’t come up a little: ninety centimetres a day, six weeks in a row, until it stands twice as tall as whoever planted it. The bamboo didn’t rush at the end. It rushed at the start, where nobody was looking.

A digital garden works like moso. A note can sit open in a notebook for months, unseen, putting down roots: the fact checked, the quote in place, the sentence tried and untried. The day it appears on the page, it looks as if it sprang up overnight. That is exactly what happened.

This note took five years to grow, or five minutes. There is no telling from outside, and that uncertainty is what makes the metaphor so good.