Bamboos are a diverse group of mostly evergreen perennial flowering plants making up the subfamily Bambusoideae of the grass family Poaceae. Giant bamboos are the largest members of the grass family, in the case of Dendrocalamus sinicus individual culms reaching a length of 46 meters, up to 36 centimeters in thickness and a weight of up to 450 kilograms. The internodes of bamboos can also be of great length. Kinabaluchloa wrayi has internodes up to 2.5 meters in length. and Arthrostylidium schomburgkii with lower internodes up to 5 meters in length, exceeded in length only by papyrus. By contrast, the culms of the tiny bamboo Raddiella vanessiae of the savannas of French Guiana are only 10–20 millimeters in length by about two millimeters in width. The origin of the word "bamboo" is uncertain, but it probably comes from the Dutch or Portuguese language, which originally borrowed it from Malay or Kannada.

बाँस, ग्रामिनीई (Gramineae) कुल की एक अत्यंत उपयोगी घास है, जो भारत के प्रत्येक क्षेत्र में पाई जाती है। बाँस एक सामूहिक शब्द है, जिसमें अनेक जातियाँ सम्मिलित हैं। मुख्य जातियाँ, बैंब्यूसा (Bambusa), डेंड्रोकेलैमस (Dendrocalamus) आदि हैं। बैंब्यूसा शब्द मराठी बैंबू का लैटिन नाम है। इसके लगभग २४ वंश भारत में पाए जाते हैं।