The generic name of this plant comes from the Greek phyllos, meaning leaf and tachys, fast, while the specific name, aurea, means golden in Latin. The result of it would be something like: gold leaf plant of rapid growth. Although derived from Chinese provinces south of the Han River, is popularly known as Japanese bamboo. Precisely there, under the Shinto sensitivity of the culture alongside ancient temples, spectacular bamboo forests emerge such as Hokoku-ji in Kamakura or Sagano in Kyoto. The latter appears already mentioned in 'The Tale of Genji' written in the eleventh century, and has more than 50 varieties of bamboo, among which, some exceed 25 meters (phyllostachys edulis). Another quality of these beautiful bamboo gardens is the sound the wind produces oscillating between their long stems, in fact, has been voted by the Japanese as one of 'the 100 sounds to preserve of Japan'.