Your beautifully jointed culms
Are a sight of tropical realms;
Your uses in that region
Are truly legion

You are really grass
With high and woody phytomass;
Some of you are in fact giants,
Others favourite browse of elephants.

You flower but once in your lifetime,
Gregariously, often coincident with famine,
When with your generous seeding
You save people from starving.

Though sometimes as thin as a reed
Seldom are you an unwanted weed;
So faithfully you serve man’s every need,
From birth till death indeed.

Known as poor man’s timber in times old,
Today you are hailed as green gold,
Not by the naive naturalist
But the greedy industrialist.

Grazing and fire are your formidable foes,
Adding to the forester’s woes
But assured is your future,
In tomorrow’s Agri-Silviculture.