Page 1 of 1

atrovaginata splint

Posted: Thu Jul 21, 2011 12:23 am
by Alan
This was one of two new shoots that snapped or got knocked over so I put a splint on it to see if it would keep growing. It did! as you can see less than half is still connected. I doubt it will survive the winter. The splint is an old cylinder head cleaning brush.

Re: atrovaginata splint

Posted: Thu Jul 21, 2011 10:38 am
by stevelau1911
I find that atrovaginata culms tend to break pretty easily. I had a few break that I had to splint over last winter which I have since culled out after the new shoots that were 3X bigger leafed out. I have also had to temporarily splint some of this year's new shoots as they were rising as they became bent down sometimes near the point of snapping. Is this one of the species with the weakest culms? This is the only species I've seen several culm breakages from.

Here's one of them that got hit by an ice storm last winter.
Image

Re: atrovaginata splint

Posted: Sun Jan 22, 2012 2:02 am
by dependable
Some times it is best just to get out the lopping shears.

Re: atrovaginata splint

Posted: Sun Jan 22, 2012 7:06 am
by stevelau1911
The only purpose of splinting it up was so it doesn't get further damaged and so the energy being produced from the snapped culm can contribute some photosynthesis during shooting season. It looked tiny after the new shoots leafed out so I lopped it by around July. I found the simplest solution to preventing this from ever happening again is to just tie all the atrovaginata culms together from bottom to top, not allowing them to try bending down due to the weight of the icy foliage.

Re: atrovaginata splint

Posted: Sun Jan 22, 2012 4:19 pm
by Alan
i just wanted to see if it could sruvive with less than half of the circumference left. it did. it grew into a nice fully leafed out culm but the splint failed last week and it just bent over. my weakest bamboo in the snow is definitely vivax.

Re: atrovaginata splint

Posted: Sun Jan 22, 2012 4:38 pm
by needmore
dependable wrote:Some times it is best just to get out the lopping shears.
...and sometimes it can be very helpful to splint...

Re: atrovaginata splint

Posted: Mon Jan 23, 2012 3:56 pm
by David
Splinting broken culms is a way of life for me since I seem to very good at breaking singular culm rare plants! But sometimes I just cut it off because I get tired looking at it. Depends on value of plant, time of year, how many total culms there are, and my mood at the time.