I’m sure I’ll realize how dumb this question is after I hear the answer, but anyway: How does bamboo reproduce itself? From what I’ve been able to detect with the naked eye, the stuff doesn’t produce flowers, seeds, cones, nuts, fruit, etc., and yet it seems to spread easily. What’s up with that? Just curious.
Bamboo self propagates by rhizomes (roots). If you happen to plant an agressive ‘runner’ type bamboo stand back!
Bamboo does flower and set seed but only once in like 10-20 years.
Primarily by runners. Temperate growing bamboo spreads by its roots through runners. Some species are classified as clumpers, which slowly expand from the original planting. These are generally tropical.
Shiva beat me by mere seconds. Oh well.
I’ll add this then. Bamboo spreads by runners, but it reproduces by seeds. Bamboos do flower and produce seeds, but they die afterwards. Bamboo is anemophilus, wind pollinated. It must have many flowers at anthesis at the same time for successful spread of the pollen. The reason bamboos die after flowering is most likely so that the seedlings will receive the water, nutrients, room and sunshine that would otherwise be used by the mother. The seedlings are mulched by the debris of the dying parent. The mechanism for the timing of flowering and dying is a phenomenon not yet understood. It is one of nature’s baffling mysteries. Another mystery is the flowering interval of bamboo, it can’t be predicted and is infrequent.
Never would have guessed that this topic would garner a simulpost. Huh.
So if bamboo flowers every 10-20 years or some other unpredictably long period of time, I would assume that means the same cluster or grove of bamboo would have to pollenate itself, no? It’s not like it can count on another bunch of bamboo, somewhere else, flowering at the same time.
Thanks for the replies. I’ll let you know if the bamboo growing nearby ever starts to flower!
[sub]Well answered. What can I add…?[/sub]
Bamboo is a grass; it’s considered a woody grass. It runners, and if you don’t believe me, come on over with a tiller. Years after I cut down and tilled up the grove, my backyard is still lousy with the roots.
as the question has been answered, may I hijack?
Bamboo dies? When? How? What can I do to accelerate the process? As far as I can tell it’s indestructible.
“Runners” – what a quaint term for those densely-haired, sinewy, spawns of Satan.
Can anyone recommend a surefire method for bamboo eradication? I’ve dug up as much as I can (needed a backhoe to do it) but the remnants keep reproducing. I will consider anything short of Agent Orange…
Triox is a pretty good herbicide made by the folks at Ortho, but it’s a soil sterilant, so you won’t be able to plant in that location for 6 months to a year or more. Otherwise, try the most potent grass killer you can find. Bamboo is a member of the Poaceae family which is all the grasses, and bona fide “grass killers” are designed to work within that family (and to an extent, all monocots) instead of genericly killing any plant and wasting half your concentration on herbicides designed to kill other plants besides grasses.
The wise man plants his bamboo and the surrounds the area with concrete or steel edging driven a few feet down into the ground around it to keep the rhizomes from spreading. Actually, the wise man says “screw that” and plants something else.
Being a bamboo fanatic, I just had to answer.
There’s some slight misinformation floating around here. While it is true that some bamboos flower once ever 10-20 years, it’s not quite the case and not so clear cut.
First, bamboos reproduce vegetatively (by rhizomes) either:
-
Pachymorph (Sympodial) - Bamboos that spread this way are clumping. Each new stem comes from a bud on the rhizome, which only grows short distances (in most clumpers not more than a few inches or so). They will NOT over run your garden. Most common in tropical bamboos, but a few temperate ones reproduce this way also. The genus Bambusa is most often sympodial
-
Leptomorph - These are the running types. Temperate bamboos are mostly leptomorphic. The rhizomes on these usually continue growing away from the plant, sending up new stems from buds along the rhizome (if you dig one of these rhizomes up, it looks a lot like a bamboo culm). The tip will occasinally leave the ground to become an above ground stem.
Bamboos, like all flowering plants do produce flowers and seeds. However, they usually take a while to do this. It has been established that most general only flower in long intervals. Often 10, 50, to even a hundred years (i recall one type not flowering for 120 years). All plants of a genera do NOT flower all at once. My book on bamboos say that the clumps all over the world that do flower at the same time are all probably clones of one plant. The reason most bamboos die after flowering is because flowering uses up most of the plant’s energy. A bamboo can be nursed backto health after flowering, but it takes years for it to start producing culms like it was before flowering.
Containment
As joph said smart bamboo growers plant them in areas with a significant barrier (A bamboo nursery online sells barriers for running bamboos. They can also be grown in cement drain pipes (but i’ve seen a pic of one bamboo that actually cracked its container). Three feet deep is the minimum for such a barrier (and it should angle so that the rhizomes would be forced to grow up so they can be trimmed). If you have a clumping bamboo, you don’t need a barrier, but most bamboos you find are not clumpers. I have a bamboo (Phyllostachys aurea “Golden Goddess”, the most common type), which i’ve had in the ground for about 7 years and it hasn’t escaped. Primarily because I cut it back a lot and generally mistreat it (but it doesnt look at all ratty).
But, if you must have a bamboo, they easily grow in containers (I have a small one in a pot indoors).
Some nice clumpers are:
-
Bambusa multiplex ‘Alphonse Karr’ - clumping, hardy to 15 degrees F. culms to 1/2 - 1 inches, 15 - 35 feet.
-
Bambusa oldhamii (Clumping giant timber bamboo)- clumping, to 20 - 55 feet. 4 inch diameter culms. Hardy to 15 F.
-
Otatea acuminata aztecorum (mexican weeping bamboo). Culms 1 1/2 inches in diameter, to 20 feet high. Hardy to 15 F. Notable for very thin grassy leaves (6 inches long by 1/8 inch wide).
Unfortunately these are only suited to where the temperatures in winter are mild.
Any more questions?
Damn, I love this message board. You get what you asked for and more!
Sure. But maybe this is more of a grass question than a bamboo question per se: are there any other grasses that come even close to bamboo(s) in terms of how tall they grow? There’s a bamboo grove down the street (I’m in Japan) where many of the plants are at least 30 feet tall and easily a foot in circumference. Are there any other freakishly gargantuan grasses out there?
If I ever get a house, I’m gonna plant bamboo in the backyard so I can watch the pandas in the morning when I’m having breakfast.
muffled snickering
What?
I was hoping for something specific to the bamboo. Don’t want to defoliate the whole back yard. I didn’t expect there was such a product. The county agricultural office pretty much told me it was a lost cause.
For the record, the bamboo was here when we bought the house. My neighbor says it was originally planted about 25 years ago by the homeowner (long since moved away) whose backyard is catercorner to my own. So it came here from some distance away. Our grove covered a triangular area about 30’ X 40’ X 50’. The tallest plants were right at 40’. That area is now a dug-up moonscape, though densely sprinkled with runners and shoots popping up in defiance.
I didn’t plant it, and I never will.
Well, if the area is already dug up and trashed, you may as well spray it. My suggestion would be to try the grass killer (as I said, make sure it’s a grass killer and not a broad spectrum herbicide) and spray the hell out of it. Well, make sure you still follow the labelling; it’s there for a reason. But use the most potent dose on the label. Then, wait a few weeks and spray it again. A lot of herbicides work best in hot weather, so you might want to wait on it (of course, it might be plenty hot where you are right now if you’re in a zone where you’re growing bamboo). Afterwards, re-sod the area or use grass plugs or seed or whatever is the best way to apply whatever sort of turf grass you have in your region.
All just my two cents.
Would those plants perhaps be Moso Chiku? (Pyllostachys heterocycla pubescens). I’ve read this is a common temple bamboo in Japan, and the shoots are a delicacy. the stems will get to be about 8 inches in diameter at their largest!
Anyway, the only other two grasses that I know of that are much like bamboo:
-
Arundo donax (Giant Reed): It doesnt look too much like bamboo, but it has the woody, hollow stems. It can grow to 20 feet in prime conditions, and will take over any place it is grown (i’d say it’s even worse than bamboo). It’s considered extremely invasive by Sunset magazine. I do hear that it’s main use is in reeds for wind instruments.I’ve seen how bad it can get. A nearby river has many large thickets of this, and in winter you’ll find rafts of defoliated stems washed up on the beach.
-
Saccharum officinarum (Sugar Cane). Doesnt grow quite as tall as most bamboos, but it’s one of the larger grasses. Needs warm weather to grow well. Can tolerate temperatures int he 20’s for short periods. Not sure how invasive it can be, but it’s only suited to the most moderate to tropical climates.
Jophiel: Would you suggest triox for a somewhat large back yard (around 70 X 80 feet)? Ours is nothing but a weedy back lot with NOTHING worth saving (weedy annual grasses, ivy that must go, coarse nasty weedy kikuyu grass (Pennisetum clandestinum). I wouldnt mind killing the entire back yard, and at the rate we do things, it wouldnt get touched for about 6 months any way.