"Then, towards the end of the 5th year, the bamboo shoots up and grows over 30 meters tall. The plant is in fact the fastest growing plant on earth and can grow around 1m within 24 hours during that period."

Which is why the USDA regulated it as a 'harmful species' in 7 CFR part 319 [1] :-) There are places in California where its gotten a bit out of control.

The appearance of 'overnight success' was the topic of Gladwell's flawed but interesting book "Outliers." And the model of building a lot of invisible infrastructure followed by sudden growth which depends on that infrastructure is common. Its sad that in some work environments the effort to build the infrastructure is ignored/lost. There is always a very real danger that folks get moved off a project before the basics are in place to show 'success.' That limits the horizon for a lot of people on the size problem they are willing to work on. Which is really too bad since there are some awesome challenges that take a bunch of work ahead of time before they show any results (like web search).

[1] www.fas.usda.gov/info/fr/1998/032098license.pdf

Bamboo is fast growing, but depending on how you measure growth, other contenders include giant kelp (similar linear growth at ~60 cm/day - without the long dormant period), the krubi (horizontal growth), and corn (mass gain).

http://scienceray.com/biology/botany/fastest-growing-plants/

At first, for 5 years, after you have sown the seed you see nothing, other than a tiny shoot, poking its head up from the ground.

"Growing like Bamboo" will become the new buzzword. Companies will start saying "Tomorrow we launch, and we better be growing like bamboo." People will get even more depressed that their app or SAAS isn't having a meteoric launch while they quickly try to fix bugs.

Everybody will think back to this article and forget that line - that the bamboo plant took years to prepare and arrange resources before launching. It can't be done overnight.

Supposedly bamboo has also been used as a form of torture: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bamboo_torture

I realize the bamboo part is not the point of this post, but can anyone confirm that this is actually how (some) bamboo grows? The only references to it I've found all go back on Coelho's novel. As far as I know/knew, bamboo shoots reach most of their full length in their first year.

Bamboo is an amazing plant. My parents buy, sell, and grow many types of exotic bamboos. I have personally witnessed a giant variety grow about 1' in a 24 hour period. It would definitely make for a great stop-motion project.

Would be fun to go on vacation and when you come back, you find your tiny pet bamboo has grown 30m tall.