During spring, the growth responses of temperate bamboo plants include the emergence of new shoots, which eventually undergo rapid elongation. How bamboo responds, particularly during the initiation of bamboo stem elongation, to the environmental changes is largely unknown. The transcriptomics and hormone profiling of newly elongating bamboo shoots by Gamuyao et al. (pp. 702-716) revealed insights as to how bamboo shoots emerge and elongate in the spring season. The hormonal status appears to convey positional information influencing site-specific differential expression of transcripts that are associated with the growth and differentiation of bamboo shoots.
The cover image shows sections of bamboo shoots before and at various later developmental stages of stem elongation.