2014 Big Chill II

[ShmuBamboo]

OK, the cold of 2013 is nothing like what is happening now in the Midwest, the South and soon to hit the Northeast. Tomorrow temps in NY state are forecast to drop 60 degrees F.

Here last month we had record lows, and my place hit 7 degrees F. After the thaw, I noticed a lot of damage to my boos. Most of my Pleoblastis are dead. My Chimano square stem is gone. My C. Culeo dropped all its leaves and is likely gone. My Allgold is leafless. My Mosos, violascens, dulcis, Castillons and Nigras (black, type) have spotty leaf kill. All of my Ps. Japonicas were unharmed, as were all my Temples, Fargesias, aureosulcatas, glaucas, atrovaginatas, iridescens, kumasaka shibeteas, aureas, nudas, Shiroshimas, Robert Youngs, and all my other non-type nigras. The smaller vivax were affected, but not the larger ones.

And so nature culls my collection down further...

[JWH]

That sucks Sorry to hear about your damage.

Just curious, was there high winds combined with that low? The most damage I've had here was at 16f with 35mph+ winds about 5 years ago, even a 5f low with no wind the next year caused alot less cold damage.

The coldest it got here during the december '13 arctic blast was 11f with minor wind. My Sinobambusa tootsik 'albostriata' has some leaf damage, it also looks like this years culms weren't hardened off enough and are damaged. Some non-bamboo plants are severely damaged/dead.

Southwest Washington & places up by the canadian border got hit harder than where I live with single digits and high winds.

[dependable]

We were at 0 f early 1/4/14, but it was calm. There seemed to be very visible little damage. This morning it was 15 f, and blowing around 25 MPH, and the tops of the P nigra leaves outside my window look freshly burnt.

[Tarzanus]

Wind and possibly sunny weather, combined with freezing temperatures will give you the best results if you want to eradicate your bamboo. If it's calm, without sun exposure, there will be some leaf damage, but usually they can recover if freeze doesn't last too long. 2 weeks of windy weather when Europe got such polar wave in 2012, managed to top kill even well established bamboos that should otherwise survive our winters with ease. I learned that tarping with textile won't do any good if there's strong wind involved. I even tried spraying the tarp with water, encasing it into ice, that should keep moisture inside - 1 to 2 cm thick ice cover was gone (due to sublimation) after 10 hours. It sucked the water the same way out of leaves, soil, ... out of everything.

That year we've got like 2 or 3 polar waves from that direction, the last one was after things started waking up in the spring and it made tree trunks exploding. Do I need to say that there was almost no fruit that year (at least the early bloomers that were hit the most).

[stevelau1911]

It got down to -3F last night with winds making it a lot worse so the bamboos definitely felt it. I'm surprised that the hardier ones still put out resistance when it feels like my fingers will freeze within minutes of being outside. Even my greenhouse got down to almost 12F which surprisingly wasn't cold enough to do much to the potted boos inside. I know there are about 7-8 more weeks before we are out of the woods.

Starting with the worst, I believe that both p dulcis and shanghai 3 may be top killed with 100% leaf burn. I expect a downsize, and it doesn't look like these species are as suited for my climate as some others.

Dulcis: The wind is so bad that I literally can't put the cover back on, but it's top killed anyways now. This is a huge loss since it was my 3rd tallest bamboo, but looks like it will fall out of that spot next season.



Shanghai III


Propinqua Beijing: Looks like this species does show some cold hardiness as the exposed culms aren't completely frying.


Atrovaginata: A lot of the leaves on the extremities have curled up and been sacrificed while the interior leaves look surprisingly good.


Parvifolia: There's spotty damage all throughout, but I believe this is my hardiest bamboo so far this winter.


Even the stream is close to being completely frozen over

[ShmuBamboo]

That sucks Sorry to hear about your damage.

Just curious, was there high winds combined with that low? The most damage I've had here was at 16f with 35mph+ winds about 5 years ago, even a 5f low with no wind the next year caused alot less cold damage.

The coldest it got here during the december '13 arctic blast was 11f with minor wind. My Sinobambusa tootsik 'albostriata' has some leaf damage, it also looks like this years culms weren't hardened off enough and are damaged. Some non-bamboo plants are severely damaged/dead.

Southwest Washington & places up by the canadian border got hit harder than where I live with single digits and high winds.

(all temps listed here in F.) With the really low temps here there was no wind. With any wind here the temps usually do not get that low. We had several days just prior in the low 20s and high to mid teens with steady 20-35 knot winds. It was brisk, and we had a dusting of snow here. The cold with wind did some top-kill damage, and I hauled the more sensitive potted boos into my garage (maybe 20 of them in all). On the coldest nights temps plummeted. I was at 7 one night, 12 the next, and then back to 18. My brother's place in Hillsboro hit 6 degrees. In Eugene it hit a record low of -10 (lowest temp ever recorded there). If I had gotten more snow before the cold, the ground would have been protected. But it was fully exposed. I have had next to no snow here this year, and Mt Hood is way under average for snowfall. My previous low here was 10, hit twice (in December and again in February) three years ago. I had just moved here and all my boos were smaller and in pots, and I either moved them onto the garage or tipped them onto the ground and covered them with plastic.

I am still seeing more damage as the boos drop leaves. I did get a little Japonica damage, but only one plant out of 20 in a wine barrel, and only the top foot of leaves. Also more Phy. nigra and Diakokuchiku damage is appearing and even some well established ones are still losing leaves. That really surprised me. Henon, Black stripe, and Bory seem unaffected, even smaller ones in pots. We had temps into the 50s last week and there was some bamboo activity, and obviously they were setting abscission layers in leaves and aborting them. More leaf and culm kill shows up when the boos become active again after low temp events.

[pokenei]

Interesting result, Steve. I thought Atrovaginata is supposed to be hardier than Parvifolia.

My guess is that Parvifolia has more leaves and thus is able to windbreak better, and it may also be that your Parvifolia have grown deeper into the ground so that it can still draw on water to replenish the stems and leaves quite efficiently.

My bamboos are all buried in snow and ice. No observation possible until Spring.
I do have a honey-suckle plant that is exposed and is quite hardy it seems - still have plenty of green leaves on it.

[stevelau1911]

There have been mixed results between the two, but these have generally been the hardiest bamboos in my garden for the past 6 winters, both of them known to hold foliage below 0F. Parvifolia just happens to have the edge this year.

One thing I did observe from this year is that parvifolia hardly put out any shoots, but it got a lot bushier. It also didn't put out very much rhizome growth either, but got a lot bushier and I believe that a lot of rooting must have occurred to support such an increase in foliage so the starch levels are likely at an all time high.

Atrovaginata on the other hand made an enormous gain in height going from under 14ft to close to 19ft with new shoots, and put on a lot of new culms, however the amount of leaf growth on them is much less than what there is on the parvifolia. The one surprising aspect about it is that it had a lot more rhizome growth than parvifolia even with the less overall foliage.

In any case, I am expecting parvifolia to produce the largest shoots out of any bamboo in my garden in 2014.

[Tarzanus]

1st year shoots are usually less hardy than 2 year old ones. Perhaps hardiness of your parvifolia seems higher because the culms are totally hardened, compared to relatively young(er) atrovaginata culms. Just a thought.

[Alan_L]

A couple of views of the damage for me:

Ph. aureosulcata 'Aureocaulis':


Ph. atrovaginata:


Ph. bissetii:


I think the low here was -8ºF (-22ºC), with quite strong and gusty winds (windchill -30ºF or so).

More here: http://www.itsnotworkitsgardening.com/2 ... amage.html

[needmore]

Alan, look at the culms and ask yourself if they seem darker, most noticeably the yellow culm forms. I seem to recall from topkill past that sometimes there is a serious fermentation associated with topkill on some species. They'll end up dark brown, heavy and smell fermented. The cut stumps will ooze & support some interesting fungal? growth on those. Phy viridis in particular seems to do this. I'm not sure we'll see this but it is interesting to look for, is it the anti-freeze in the culms freezing and fermenting? Dunno, never researched this so there might be info out there or they may not do this at all, time will tell.

[Iowaboo]

The cut stumps will ooze & support some interesting fungal? growth on those. Phy viridis in particular seems to do this.

I remember having something like that happen

[foxd]

The first stickhorn fungi I ever saw was in the bamboo.

I haven't had the heart to check all my bamboo yet, but if the Phy. aurea 'Koi' is any indicater then things are bad.

A question to ponder. If the polar vortex brought freezing temperatures to us, then how much did we warm the polar vortex in turn? We may be in for a very early Spring.

Finally got word on my car. They said to stay in the rental. (The accident actually happened before Thanksgiving. I was involved in a multi-car collision in the Burger King Drive-thru, which put my car in the shop for several weeks. )

[stevelau1911]

If the average temperatures in the northern hemisphere are exceptionally low this winter, I believe that it will only take 2-3 weeks for the cold air to reload to threaten another sub-zero freeze when average temperatures are at the lowest.

Even though the less hardy bamboos look completely fried, it doesn't look like it was enough to cause culm death. Here's a closeup on the shanghai 3 and dulcis. If they are indeed alive by shooting season, there should be enough starches in the culms to at least produce close to what was lost, and look good by July.

[foxd]

I tried to look at the damage to my bamboo yesterday evening. Most of it is still stuck to the ground by heavy snow and there are large tree branches everywhere. Judging from the one leaf sticking out of a snow bank, the rufa may be undamaged.

There was the distict smell of a freshly mowed lawn that tells me there is a lot of bamboo damage. I will know more when the snow melts off this weekend.

I did discover tracks of someone prowling around outside the house. Obviously not a meter reader.