I just got an inspiration for this color scheme - green with red trim and gold leaf on the bamboo spines."

Complete fusion results in a complete rigidity of the spine, a condition known as "bamboo spine".

But John H. Dirckx, M.D., in an essay on etymology in the front of Merriam-Webster's excellent medical desk dictionary, shows how doctors have used "lively and even poetic compounds" to identify old ailments: these include frozen shoulder, bamboo spine, knock-knee, strawberry mark and the bends .

Skeletal evidence of the disease (ossification of joints and entheses primarily of the axial skeleton, known as "bamboo spine") was found in an archaeological dig that unearthed the skeletal remains of a 5000-year-old Egyptian mummy with evidence of bamboo spine.