Bamboo

Verdant green leaves flutter in the breeze on gracefully swaying stems, uttering a million soft whispers that build together into waves on a shoreline. Sound, motion, and color combine in almost hypnotic fashion, encouraging the observer to stop, rest, and listen in tranquility...

The bamboo garden at the Hoyt Arboretum in Portland, Oregon.

Bamboo. It's a plant that strikes fear or sparks delight in people, depending on their opinions. The opening lines above reflect my view of this beautiful and incredibly useful group of plants. And it is that: a group of many, different plants, though many people speak about bamboo in blanket statements, treating them all interchangeably. Bamboo comes in a wide range of sizes and growth habits. I firmly believe there is a bamboo suitable for every garden. Whether you wish to grow any is up to personal choice, but there's no need to villify or fear these plants. Bamboos have specific needs and management techniques, and once these are understood it becomes much less daunting.

Fargesia dracocephala 'Rufa' is one of the smaller clumping types, averaging 6-7 feet tall and 10 feet wide, though it can be pruning to maintain a narrower profile. It can also grow taller, to 10 feet, under good conditions.

Bamboos are true grasses that form woody stems (except for a few tropical herbaceous species not in cultivation), allowing some of them to achieve incredible sizes. They range in height from ground covers around a foot tall to giants towering over 100 feet. The smaller ones look little different from some "normal" grasses, while the taller ones resemble trees more than grasses. These plants are broadly split into two groups, runners and clumpers, which are more accurately described as leptomorphs and pachymorphs, respectively. 
Pleioblastus viridistriatus is a small running bamboo that plays relatively well with shrubs, though it can pop up through them.

Leptomorph bamboos, the runners, have rhizomes which continue to grow indeterminately at the tip, sending up culms (the upright shoots) along their length. This allows running bamboos to spread over 10 feet in a single season, though you may not notice until new culms appear along the length of the rhizomes the next year. Pachymorph bamboos, the clumpers, have short rhizomes which send up a single, terminal culm. From the base of this culm, more rhizomes form and produce culms at their ends. This results in a slow, measured expansion each growing season, just like any other clumping ornamental grass. Some have longer rhizomes than others, perhaps the longest being Chusquea gigantea with rhizomes approaching two feet in length, but they will never pop up unexpectedly 10 feet away from the main clump.
Exposed rhizomes of Fargesia dracocephala 'Rufa' illustrating pachymorph structure. On the left, you can see one terminal pointing upwards. This will form a culm. The rhizomes branching from behind that point going back into the soil will grow a few more inches, at most, then branch and produce another set of rhizomes with a single culm.

Fargesia scabrida is one of the more open clumpers. The culms on the right show about how far new culms can appear from old ones in this species. The more open habit gives it a much more graceful appearance than most hardy clumpers.

Many people mistakenly view bamboo as invasive, a common misconception resulting from conflating "invasive" with "aggressive", and a lack of understanding of how to manage bamboo. Many plants, not just bamboos, can be aggressive in gardens, especially more traditional gardens where soil is rich and water is plentiful. Aggressive growth in such a garden doesn't usually translate to invasive potential, as plants in the wild are rarely as pampered as they are in our gardens. I may discuss this point about "invasive" vs. "aggressive" in a later post, as it's one of my pet peeves, but for this post, I'll let these links from the American Bamboo Society and Lewis Bamboo Nursery cover the "invasive" accusations towards bamboo. Yes, they are biased sources, but unlike local government councils, they actually know what they're talking about!

American Bamboo Society

Lewis Bamboo


Unfortunately, many people form their opinions on bamboo based on bad experiences with running bamboos planted by negligent or ignorant owners who don't care or don't know how to maintain their plants, and don't take their neighbors into consideration. Others simply fear bamboo because they aren't familiar with it and have heard tales from people with negative experiences. It's hard-to-impossible to change the minds of these individuals, and I don't really intend to try. So I hope I'm not flooded with horror stories due to this post. I can guarantee your horror stories are due to bad practice, not the plant. As with dogs, blame the owner, not the pet.
Indocalamus tessellatus mixing with Polystichum munitum. This plant is spreading a bit faster than anticipated, but the rhizomes are so shallow and thin I'm not especially worried about it. I may have to move some smaller perennials out of its way, though.

Besides being beautiful, bamboo is incredibly useful. It provides excellent cover and nesting for small birds, food for humans and livestock, and can be used to make almost anything made out of wood, plastic, even metal (of course, the processes involved can make the bamboo versions more or less practical and environmentally-friendly). Some bamboo have a tensile strength higher than steel. Bamboo grows faster than trees for timber, and can be harvested many times unlike cutting down an entire tree. This results in less soil disturbance and erosion, and less land used. Opinions vary on the carbon sequestration merits of bamboo, with some studies suggesting that replacing trees with bamboo actually reduces the ability of forests to sequester carbon. This seems to be an argument against using bamboo for timber, but I see it as an argument for. Using bamboo to grow more timber in less space would allow more tree forests to stand untouched, possibly allowing for greater carbon sequestration and leaving more intact forest ecosystems with greater biodiversity.

I love my bamboos. I eagerly await the beginning of shooting season, sometimes beginning as early as mid-February, though not starting in earnest until sometime in March. It's so exciting to see the shoots emerge and rapidly grow upwards, attaining their full height in only about a month or so. The leaves flutter gracefully in the slightest breeze, culms swaying as the wind blows a little more. The sound and motion add new dimensions to the garden. In fall, some of the Fargesia have beautiful color changes, as a portion of their leaves turn buttery to golden yellow and drop. Most bamboos maintain a lush, verdant appearance through winter that helps to recall the lush spring and summer garden in the "off" season.
Sasa veitchii is grown primarily for the unusual bleached leaf edges that develop in winter 

I only wish I had planted them earlier. Instead, they were some of the last large plants added to the garden. There are a couple that may need to move before they get too big, or else a few plants around them should move. I'm almost leaning towards the latter option. I intend to plan my next garden with bamboo in mind from the start. It will be one of the first things I plant, instead of one of the last. I will always have bamboo, even if I have room for only a single specimen in a container.
A Phyllostachys I obtained without an ID, growing in a container. I've tentatively ID'd it as Ph. meyeri. I'm seriously considering planting it in the field in a month. It can shade out the non-native invasive field grasses and provide poles and stakes.

More posts on bamboo are forthcoming. As you may have noticed, this rambling rant of a post tried to tackle too much at once, and I feel kind of failed to really manage any of it. I'll be writing many more posts on bamboo, each with a more narrow focus. Containment, pruning, and profiles on some of my favorites (mostly clumpers) are on the list. However, before that, I was asked for an update on my trees, also a very important part of my garden. Since that is also a large topic, and the deciduous trees have yet to leaf out, I'll be covering the evergreens first. The deciduous trees will be covered after they leaf out in spring, perhaps even after they've had a chance to grow in summer.

Comments

  1. I like it. Keep them coming please. Lots of good info here. I love bamboo too--but need to know more. Looking forward to more of your excellent posts.

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  2. I garden in the Olympic Mountain rainshadow, and another positive trait about bamboo is it’s summer drought resistance. I grow Phyllostachys nigra. P. aurea and Fargesia nitida in containers. You mentioned F. 'Rufa' in the post, which I've used successfully in my woodland garden to divide a space and block an unwanted view.

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    1. Good point! Many bamboo are, indeed, quite drought tolerant once established. You can choose to push them to reach their greatest potential with extra water, but they will still be quite nice without much additional water, provided your site isn't too dry. I love clumping bamboo in woodlands. I think they look wonderful under our native trees.

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  3. As bamboo is such a massive topic, this is rather a good overview and even poetic at times :-)
    Looking at pictures of massive bamboo forests of black bamboo or the yellow timber giants, with culms towering so many feet in the air, take my breath away. For my little garden I settle on clumping bamboo (a Fargesia type) in a pot. I am looking to use bamboo in a large pot to screen the neighbor's recycling containers. Your bamboo posts will come in handy.

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    1. Thank you. I will definitely be covering growing bamboo in containers.

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  4. While I love the look of bamboo - and sound of wind weaving through it - I admit I'm wary of even the clumping types, especially as last year's much heavier-than-usual rainfall caused other of my rhizomatous plants (one sold as controllable in my low-rainfall climate) to explode. I look forward to your future post on controlling them.

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    1. It all depends on the type of rhizome. Some rhizomes can continue to grow in length all season long. Clumping bamboo is incapable of that, but sometimes running bamboos are sold as clumping bamboos by ignorant or unscrupulous garden centers, and then when they inevitably run, people think their clumper has become invasive, when it was never a clumping bamboo to begin with.

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  5. looking forward to more...especially on control. I am growing golden bamboo which is supposed to be contained within bamboo barrier. It has jumped the barrier in a few areas and I would like to understand how to deal with this in the best way possible

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    1. I will try to cover control as best I can. I prefer the rhizome pruning method of control rather than barriers, but I've read about horror stories of barriers failing.

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  6. I was very good at watering my stock tanks of bamboo last year. I neglected a lot of garden chores while I sat at my desk and wrote, but letting the hose soak the tanks every week was not one of them. I also fertilized well, they're pretty much the only plant I actually fertilize. Reading your post reminded me that I need to get in there and cut out the dead culms, which I did today. Two tanks down, two to go. I must say, they look fabulous. There maybe hope for me and my containerized bamboo yet.

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    1. I must say I love your bamboo stock tanks, even though they do present certain challenges.

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