Block of the Month: Bamboo

You’ll find bamboo being snacked on by pandas in the towering, green, bamboo jungle biome. This rare jungle variant is tricky to find, but seasoned builders will already know that it’s well worth seeking out. 

Until recently, the bamboo harvested there was supremely useful for its ability to be crafted into scaffolding blocks. These temporary blocks are easy to put up, climb, and take down again, making them essential in any large building project. But what if you want to use bamboo in your constructions and not take it down again? 

Well, all it takes for your architectural dreams to come true is to mash nine bamboo twigs together in a crafting grid – giving you the bamboo block. This can be used in much the same way you use wood – as a building material on its own, stripped to remove the green bark, or turned into planks. Unlike harder woods, though, a bamboo block will only yield two planks per block crafted.

Don’t like building? Don’t worry. You can also use bamboo in furnaces, to smelt 1.5 items per block, or under note blocks to produce a “bass” sound.

REAL bamboo has been used in permanent construction for centuries. It has a high strength-to-weight ratio, and it’s pretty resilient. One bridge made of bamboo in Quan-Xian, in China, has stood since at least 960 AD – thanks to continuous maintenance. It performs particularly well in earthquakes.

In the past couple of decades, interest in bamboo as a construction material has grown due to its sustainability. Bamboo grows much faster than trees, so using it in place of regular wood helps to avoid cutting down tropical forests. South East Asia and South America are at the forefront of the modern use of bamboo.

Luckily, Minecraft has as many trees as you can grow, and plenty of bamboo too. So you don’t need to choose it for sustainability reasons. Instead, you should select it for its good looks alone! Just watch out that a panda doesn’t move into your beautiful new house...