The bamboo boom is a green tidal wave.

Bamboo can be found in everything from wood floors to baby soft fabrics. Marketed as beneficial to the environment, it is a renewable resource. Bamboo is a a woody grass, not a tree. As one of the fastest growing plants in nature, bamboo easily replenishes itself. In China, bamboo can grow 24 inches in a day. Mature plants are harvested for such versatile uses such as flooring, furniture, doors, construction materials, clothing, bedding and towels.

Bamboo flooring is one of the most popular applications. "It's something unique and different. People are looking for something not everyone else has. It's very hard flooring, a lot harder than traditional oak floors, and more durable. People like that it's green friendly — and it's a versatile product," says Bob Klein, owner of BK Tile in Cedar Falls.

It is installed in the same manner as hardwood flooring and cost per-foot is comparable to hardwood.

One new product, Wood-Boo, combines bamboo with tropical hardwood. The layered flooring is 75 percent Gianty Hairy bamboo, one of hundreds of kinds of bamboo not consumed by pandas, and 25 percent hardwood, such as brazilian cherry, Asian walnut, Asian mahogany or Brazilian teak that is grown and harvested through controlled forestry practices.

"People are excited about bamboo products," says Nancy Meinders, owner of Home Interiors in Cedar Falls. The store carries the Wood-Boo product, as well as bamboo sheets and bedspreads. "I think the public is surprised by what's available, and I'm seeing more and more interest in all 'green' products. The sheets are soft, for only a 200-thread count, they feel nicer than Egyptian cotton."

In furniture, bamboo or simulated bamboo has been around for centuries — picture the spindly but sturdy legs of Asian-influenced tables or plant stands. Now bamboo wood is used by architects and designers for construction, airy summer houses as well as for sturdy flooring, furniture and design accents and even for dinnerware. Bamboo fiber is also blended with hemp, organic cotton or silk.

Bamboo isn't a tree. It is technically a grass, sometimes defined as a woody grass, explained Brian Funk of the Brooklyn Botanical Garden, curator of the Japanese Hill and Pond Garden and of the Japanese tree-peony collection.

In size it can range from a ground cover 1 to 2 feet high, to timber bamboos topping out at 75 feet or so. "Depending on the climate, the stems could get to a diameter of 8 to 10 feet."

China is still a major producer of bamboo, but now bamboo is becoming a homegrown product.

"Recently, in the past decade or so, it's been cultivated in the southern U.S. — plantations have been springing up all over, especially in Georgia, for example," Funk said.

As for the popular "lucky bamboo" sold in markets and Chinatown stores, that's no bamboo, Funk said. It's a different plant genus, a kind of Draecena, he said.