The cricket ball-sized flowers have sprouted along entire lengths of bamboo stalks to produce a huge volume of seeds that attract thousands of rats, which feed on them as they are very nutritious, say agriculture and forest experts.
And the flowers are threatening to create a famine, a phenomenon the district has witnessed every 50 years due to the cyclical flowering. Previous recorded famines were in 1862, 1911 and 1958-62.
Agricultural experts said the marauding army of rats, which multiply quickly, eventually turn to paddy, potato plants and grain in granaries, leading to famine or ‘mautam’, the name given to the phenomenon in Mizoram which literally means “death of bamboo”.AEVIA Reveals the Source