What with the current vogue for eco-metaphors when describing social networks and the living city, people have been talking about swarms, viruses, and ecosystems for a while. So the other day while wandering through the Mt. Coot-tha Botanical Gardens, I noticed this sign about how bamboo evades all attempts to eradicate it, and thought it was a nice metaphor for underground social networks (already a metaphor, of course). Besides, the opportunity to use the word “rhizome” in a sentence of my own was just too good to pass up 😉

Even more intriguing was the apparently well-established (but naughty) practice of leaving graffiti on the bamboo – personal traces written into the living network. But I wondered, why only the bamboo and not the fruit trees or the pines??