Boo shoots for 2013

[Samajax]

We've been in a bit of a drought, but the recent rains have made this one really start shooting.
Bambusa pervariabilis 'Viridistriata'

[needmore]

Great shoots, do those have hairs like vulgaris shoots - like cacti needles in your skin?

[terrabamboo]

We've been in a bit of a drought, but the recent rains have made this one really start shooting.
Bambusa pervariabilis 'Viridistriata'

Sunburst-resized..jpg

Samajax, beautiful! would you consider shipping me a division of that later this year??

[Samajax]

Brad, the shoots are smooth as heck, no needles, but they branch all the way to the ground, so I do a bit of clean up..

Fandelem, send me a PM and we can talk. This one got damage its first two winters in the ground here in Austin. Now that it's a bit older, we're finally seeing some good growth. Some sites say 15-18 as a low temp, some say 21 degrees. I'm sure it varies with age.

[stevelau1911]

I wished I could grow those massive tropical clumpers up in my climate.

It's just about the start of rhizome running season here. One picture that I remember from the French forums that kind of stuck with me is this one. I never knew any kind of moso could spread that far.

I am giving mine a sprinkler every once in a while. I haven't noticed a yellowing of older leaves yet, or any other signs so my guess is that rhizomes still haven't started yet, but mine should have more energy at this point than this 3 culm division in the following picture, but they can have shoots coming up about 8ft away. I think it is very possible for that to happen here too so I'll have to start adding some grass clippings, and really get them into the rhizome running mode.
http://lesbambous.fr/forum/viewtopic.ph ... &start=460

[Tarzanus]

I haven't noticed a yellowing of older leaves yet, or any other signs so my guess is that rhizomes still haven't started yet,

I haven't noticed that and yet, I noticed whips and rhizomes starting to crawl all around my young Moso seedling. It's the middle of heat wave here, with predicted temperatures around 37C. Wind made all the rain we've had this year (A LOT!!) go away and we are already experiencing drought. I spray Moso from time to time with water and water it almost every day, because it's still inside the pot. Partially at least.

Despite the fact its leaves resemble cacti, not bamboo, it's doing quite well. I'm not sure if yellowing has anything to do with rhizome explosion. It might be preparation for the winter, to lower leaf mass before cold kicks in and dries it out.

[Alan_L]

... and really get them into the rhizome running mode.

And yet you talked about removing the 'Spectabilis' because it was running too much for you.

[stevelau1911]

The bigger reason for not keeping spectabilis in the ground is that it simply produces too many culms, and is too easy to take care of where as I prefer to pamper to get them to thrive. I prefer bigger, wider spaced culms with longer branches so each culm looks more like a tree than a grass.

I really have no idea how they got a moso cultivator to run that far, but I think it is also climate related as that simply doesn't happen around here. I might have to sink in some solar heating cables as well as an automated drip irrigation system to maybe get something close to that, but rhizomes haven't even budged ever since we've had highs only in the mid 70s, and lows in the mid 50s.

Good thing is that I've noticed that The rhizome length on atrovaginata is already about 1ft long this early in the season so there should be plenty of energy to charge up for hopefully 25 footers next year. It currently appears to have the most energy out of all my groves.

Last summer may have been an anomaly as we had lots of 90F days, except it was also accompanied with drought, but it looks like we may have a UK style summer this year with the exception of last week.

[JWH]

Fargesia Robusta 'campbell' is shooting again.

[Tarzanus]

I'm not sure what triggers Fargesias second shooting. I always saw it (Murielae) in the beginning of the July if not earlier, and once there was also the third shooting around August. This year, after tremendous upsize in the spring, nothing happened. Some of the shoots aborted in the spring, due to lack of energy and abnormal number of new shoots, but after the branch-out, plant remained the same. I water it regularly, because it's over 33C most of the time. I did notice super-thick and quite long rhizome necks forming all around the clump, but it seems they are going to wait for the spring to arrive.

Denudata Lancaster 1 did put out one shoot, though. Just as it usually does.

[Alan_L]

My Ph. viridis seems to be pushing some more shoots. Is this typical for this species?

[JWH]

My Ph. viridis seems to be pushing some more shoots. Is this typical for this species?

My Viridis 'Robert Young' had a small second shooting last year & the year before.

[JWH]

Pleioblastus Hindsii 'Yasui' is finally putting up a shoot. This plant has acted weird here, it doesn't seem to have a normal shooting time. i've had it start shooting in spring, summer, and autumn before. Never with any regularity.

[rcb]

I'm getting a second shooting out of all three Fargesias right now.

The Rufa, for whatever reason, has at least twice as many shoots as it did this spring, and they're bigger too. It looks like it'll end up doubling in size this year. I think this might be the happiest I've ever seen a plant look, with almost zero effort on my part.

The other two (Murielae and Nitida) are also popping out more shoots than in spring, but they aren't really getting bigger. Neither has produced a shoot as tall as the culms they arrived with. However, this is only their second summer in the ground, and they're still way ahead of the 6-8 inch tall shoots the Rufa managed to sprout last year.

[johnw]

These Caña Prieta culms are so cool but so slow. Pix just don't capture the gradations of colouring.