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Bamboo produces new shoots in the spring that will become new canes (culms). A significant percentage of new shoots won't make it. They will get a few inches tall and stop growing. The new bamboo canes will grow for a couple of months until they reach their maximum heigth and diameter. This means a cane that is going to be 4 inches in diameter will come out of the ground that big around and grow to 60 feet plus in about 8 weeks. They will never grow taller or larger than they are after that spurt of growth in one spring. Each cane may live for up to ten years. The bamboo grove changes leaves in the spring with new leaves slowly replacing old ones. Please understand,
this doesn't mean you should expect 4 or 5 inch canes from your timber
bamboo the first year. Bamboos are in the grass family. Yes, that's right,
a giant Moso cane, 7 inches in diameter and 75 feet tall a type of grass!.
It grows rhizomes underground with new shoots coming up all along the
rhizomes. All summer longt the leaves store energy in this dense network
of rhizomes. Each year the grove should produce many more new, and larger
canes. The bamboo grove will be well established within three years and
with lots of feeding and some care should be producing mature canes in
5 to 10 years, depending on the climate, species, soil, water, sunlight,
etc. Since bamboo grows so differently from most plants, it may seem it's just sitting there, not growing at all. Remember, bamboo only grows in the spring. The canes of the plant I sent you won't grow any taller or put on new limbs. Instead you will see one or more new shoots when the ground warms up and the days are longer. They may be small or bushy but at this point we just want as many leaves as possible. They will feed the underground rhizome, store up energy, and send up more new shoots the following spring. You should have fertilized it before now!
KINGDOM: Plantae
Bamboos are further
divided into genera and species. Most of the timber bamboos fall into
the genus "Phyllostachys".There are many different species of
Phyllostachys. For example, the correct name for Black Bamboo is Phyllostachys
nigra. Phyllostachy is the genus and nigra is the species. The genus is
capitalized and the species is not. To make it a little more confusing
there are different "forms" of some species. Phyllostachys nigra
(Black Bamboo) has several "forms" or "cultivars"
such as P.n. Henon and P. n. Bory, and P. n. Megurichiko. |
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Bamboo is actually a giant grass. (FAMILY: Gramineae (Poaceae) It grows from a network of rhizomes. Although some people call these roots they are actually a type of modified, underground stem. Culms and roots grow from the rhizomes. When you see a grove of bamboo it is much like one large plant. In the spring new culms (canes) sprout from this network of rhizomes. The sprouts, or shoots, come out of the ground full sized (diameter) and reach their maximum heigth within a couple of months. When the grove of bamboo is still young, "full size" may only be a few feet tall. Once the grove has matured and has a large number of canes, then "full size" can be a cane several inches in diameter and 25 to 65 feet tall! (depending on the species) It's easy to see why bamboo is often said to be the fastest growing plant. Some shoots can grow as much as 2 feet or more in 24 hours. Each individual culm (cane) will live from 5 to 10 years. There are more than 1400 species of bamboo. The bamboo family is roughly divided into two groups according to their rhizomes. Sympodial (clumping species), and monopodial(running). Almost all of the clumpers are tropical or sub-tropical although a few such as Fargesias, are extremely cold hardy. Many runners are hardy down to -10 degrees F. or lower. Hardy means that they will stay green and leafy down to the rated temperature. Living in Alabama, zone 7b, all the bamboo I grow is the running type(monopodial). Well actually, I grow a few clumpers just for fun but have to move them into the greenhouse each winter. I've got plantings of Bambusa multiplex and B.m.'Alfonse Karr' in the ground but most ever winter they are heavily damaged by the cold (or killed to the ground) and come back from the rhizomes. Because of this they never get mroe than a few feet tall. Bamboo flowers very infrequently, making seed somewhat rare. When it does flower, all plantings of the same clone do so at the same time, no matter where they are located (In general). Intervals between flowerings vary widely and may be as great as 80 years or more. The grove may die after flowering or be set back severly. The grove may slowly recover or re-establish from seed. When bamboo does flower it presents us with the oportunity to start new clones of a species. I currently have a grove of P.angusta in full flower. This grove is about 10 years old but has been slow to mature. It gets very little sun and this spring I noticed it looked kind of sad, partially defoliated. I took a close look and found the entire grove flowering heavily. I hope to collect some seed. Considering how bad the grove currently looks I don't hold out much hope that this bamboo will make it. I've got pictures on my Update and Bamboo ID pages. In the 15 years I've been growing bamboo I've only had two other species flower. The first was a variegated P.aurea. It was only a couple years old and died right after flowering. The second was Arrow Bamboo (P.japonica). This species is fairly common around Birmingham and most locations flowered and died. I cut my grove to the ground a couple of times. It came back looking good each time but kept going back into the flowering stage.There was another clone that did not flower so there are still some nice groves around. |
Flowering Update
| We currently have two species of bamboo flowering. As reported on my Update and Bamboo ID pages Phyllostachys angusta is flowering heavily. During the American Bamboo Society meeting at the Birmingham Botanical Gardens a couple of months ago we found P. viridis flowering. Now my grove of this species has begun to flower. This bamboo originally came form a local supplier. Another supplier at the meeting also reported his P.viridis has been flowering for sometime so I expect there is widespread flowering of this species. I recommend not planting P.viridis for the next few years until we've had a chance to see how it responds and weather or not it recovers. |
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