Bamboo

Bamboo isn't wood at all in the botanical sense — it's a fast-growing grass — but it's included in every Janka hardness chart because bamboo flooring competes directly with hardwood flooring on durability and price.

Hardness Varies Enormously by Processing

Here's the single fact worth remembering about bamboo hardness: solid, natural (non-strand-woven) bamboo flooring typically tests in the 1,300-1,700 lbf range — a mid-hard domestic hardwood, roughly. Strand-woven bamboo, where the fibers get shredded, compressed, and fused under heat and resin, is a genuinely different product, commonly testing at 3,000-4,000+ lbf — more than double what oak manages. Check which one you're actually looking at before you compare numbers, or you'll draw the wrong conclusion entirely.

Working Properties

Natural bamboo machines about like a moderately hard domestic hardwood, silica content included, which means it'll dull blades a bit faster than the number alone implies. Strand-woven bamboo is denser and rougher on tools across the board.

Typical Uses

Flooring almost exclusively, plus some cutting boards and small furniture pieces.