I know a lot of people here have grown Fargesia nitida from seed. I have a question on how fast the seedlings grow.

I purchased Fargesia spathacea seed from ebay. Besides the fact that ebay isnt the most reliable source for proper seed type, Fargesia spathacea, is now thought to be Fargesia Spathacea.

http://members.chello.nl/~p.meeuws/bb/a ... stap01.pdf

"Treatments of these bamboos by Chinese taxonomists have been inconsistent. Fargesia nitida
has usually been recognised as a distinct species. However, it has sometimes been treated as
a synonym of F. spathacea (Wang & Ye, 1981; Yi, 1983), although Yi later seemed to change
his mind and recognised F. nitida as a distinct species (Yi, 1985). Without flowers of F. nitida
as cultivated from Potanin or Berezowski’s seed this would obviously be a difficult
synonomy to prove satisfactorily."

"It is now easier to assess
its similarity to F. murieliae, with which it was considered synonymous for a while
(Soderstrom, 1979). The differences between the flowers of Fargesia murieliae and those of F.
spathacea were sufficient to convince me (Stapleton, 1995) that they were two different
species, and to conjecture that the latter species was probably more like F. nitida in stature
and vegetative characteristics."

""The obvious conclusion from all this is that the bamboos named F. spathacea and F. nitida are
not only very similar, they are close enough to be considered the same species. The very
small differences in the flowers are well within the variation that could be accepted within a
species,....... "


So it seems that the odds are the Fargesia spathacea seeds I got, are more then likely Fargesia Nitida. That being said, I was wondering if any of you that , grew Fargesia "nitida", from seed remember how fast the seedlings grew over 4 weeks. Ive read that the seedling growth is "slow", but compared to my Borinda fungosa seedlings, the F spathacea seedlings I have are three times the size. They (spathacea) are growing as fast as my Fargesia (borinda?) Yunannensis seedlings.

How tall were your F nitida seedlings after 4 weeks growth?