Rhizomes 2012

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johnw
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Re: Rhizomes 2012

Post by johnw »

Is that rubro rhizome following your horse? :wink:

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stevelau1911
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Re: Rhizomes 2012

Post by stevelau1911 »

serenityinbamboo wrote:Image

This is my Rubro...coming up in the horse stall 20 feet away and diving again!... Root pruning twice a year in Florida, just not enough :lol:

Here's one of the thing that seem to correlate. Doesn't it seem like the bamboos that produce the longer internodes on skinnier culms seem to produce rhizomes that also run farther? It also seems to work the same with the number of rhizomes that get produced altogether. The bamboos that produce shoots like crazy also seem to produce a lot of rhizomes.

It just happens that rubro produces some of the longest internodes, and getting over 20ft sounds very impressive, but this is also one of the most aggressive runners. I guess you could probably just mow them over, the barn included, and see how far the rhizomes can stretch.
Alan_L
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Re: Rhizomes 2012

Post by Alan_L »

Crazy! Are you saying it's grown 20+ feet in less than a year (since you last pruned)?

Are you sure you didn't miss one?
serenityinbamboo
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Re: Rhizomes 2012

Post by serenityinbamboo »

John W...definitely following the horse poop :lol:

Stevelau...Don't need to mow the barn over...it has pushed up through the floor boards on the other side.. :wink:

Alan L.... I last pruned in May and before that was January. I have noticed it becoming more aggressive in the past year so I had stepped up the pruning! Florida sunshine and the over abundance of rain that we have had in the past several months has really given it LIFE!!! That and the horse and goat poop in the area :lol:
stevelau1911
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Re: Rhizomes 2012

Post by stevelau1911 »

Wow, if it was pruned in May, then we are talking about 1ft + of rhizome growth per week which is pretty amazing. I wished we could graft rhizome tips of one bamboo onto another because that could really make rare species available within a very short amount of time. You probably have the best climate for growing bamboo out of everyone on this forum.
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Re: Rhizomes 2012

Post by bamboothew »

I think rhizome growth only starts after the new culms reach full height, right? If so, that means that rhizome growth almost never starts until may or later anyway and stops when the weather cools down enough. Therefore it is reasonable to assume that bamboo rhizomes will have done all of their growing between may (or later) and onset of cool weather anyway. It should also follow that the farther south one goes towards Florida, the longer rhizomes can grow due to the length of the growing season. Therefore if yellowgroove can shoot 20ft+ rhizomes here in zone 7b in South Carolina, rhizomes in florida should be able to grow even longer, perhaps :shock: If I'm right at all about their growing habits, anyway?

Anyway, I would guess that:

hot summers with good precip=long rhizomes and
hot, even longer summers with good precip=even longer rhizomes

However, as forum members seem to have proven anecdotally, lack of summer heat and/or adequate precip cause stunted rhizome growth. Extreme examples are UK members whose phyllos shoot mere inches long rhizomes and assume a clump-like habit.

Maybe :)
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Genesis 2:8 And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there He put the man whom He had formed.
stevelau1911
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Re: Rhizomes 2012

Post by stevelau1911 »

I sometimes see rhizome growth occur in the early spring, usually only on certain species like dulcis and atrovaginata, but it seems to stop when shooting season commences. It seems like the new shoots need to get leafed out, and well hardened off before rhizomes can start growing again. This seems to happen faster when in hot and wet conditions. Drought also seems to delay rhizome growth since it requires a lot of water. For more established bamboos which take a while to fill up their culms with starch, it seems like most of the rhizome season lasts from around August until the middle of October.

Given that shoots emerge in late February for Florida, and culms new shoots are already nicely leafed out by April, the rhizome running season can probably run from April all the way through summer, fall, winter, and spring until shooting occurs again. We only get about 1/4 as much rhizome running time as Florida if they never go dormant there. I also think the amount of rain in addition to the warm soil temperatures will also add to the rate that rhizomes run.


Even though rhizomes don't run much on their own around here, I think putting a greenhouse over the bamboo can help add a month on both sides to the growing season which should help contribute at least a little bit in growth. My goal is to maintain the soil temperature close to 50F from November until April so vernalization can continue. All I have is a small paraffin lamp, a greenhouse light, and a 70W fish tank heater which I plan to mess around with. I know a 400W metal halide might be kind of weak, but I only plan on using it as a supplemental light in the winter whenever it seems like we never get a sunny day, and the day is only about 8 hours long.
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Re: Rhizomes 2012

Post by serenityinbamboo »

This is the grove that is trying to take over the barn......
February this year....
Image
and now....
Image
stevelau1911
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Re: Rhizomes 2012

Post by stevelau1911 »

Here are the spectabilis whip shoots again. The tallest one out of the 7 is breaking the 8ft mark and still appears to be growing. Hopefully it stays warm long enough for them to leaf out a bit and harden off for the winter. This forced shooting seems to be temporarily shutting down the progress on all the other rhizomes.
Image

Here's an atrovaginata rhizome that was severed from the main plant which looks like it intends to turn upwards and produce shoots, but it may be too late in the season. Hopefully it doesn't waste its energy trying. It seems like severing the connection to the mother plant causes some sort of chemical reaction which causes the rhizome to change its mind.
Image
Image
bamboothew
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Re: Rhizomes 2012

Post by bamboothew »

Phyllostachys virella has 4 rhizomes dolphining up to 8 feet from the nearest culms in all directions. This from a 3 galllon plant last summer. The rhizomes are larger in diameter than the largest culms, so perhaps there will be a huge upsize next spring, since the culms are usually much larger than the rhizomes they grow from? Wow 8)
God Bless,

Matthew

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Genesis 2:8 And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there He put the man whom He had formed.
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Re: Rhizomes 2012

Post by stevelau1911 »

bamboothew wrote:Phyllostachys virella has 4 rhizomes dolphining up to 8 feet from the nearest culms in all directions. This from a 3 galllon plant last summer. The rhizomes are larger in diameter than the largest culms, so perhaps there will be a huge upsize next spring, since the culms are usually much larger than the rhizomes they grow from? Wow 8)
Have you ever tried purposely turning some of those rhizomes into whip shoots? I'm not sure if it will really make a difference in the size of next year's shoots, but forcing some of the shoots to turn into whip shoots should slow down the spread by quite a bit.

If virella is similar to atrovaginata, it should automatically have some of the largest rhizomes in the genus, even as a new division, and back in 2010, the shoots that came from my atrovaginata were a bit smaller in diameter than the rhizomes produced in the previous year. With your overall climate, I think all of your bamboos should have a bigger upsize than ever, especially if most of them have not produced a single shoot since March/April.
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needmore
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Re: Rhizomes 2012

Post by needmore »

stevelau1911 wrote:
Have you ever tried purposely turning some of those rhizomes into whip shoots? I'm not sure if it will really make a difference in the size of next year's shoots, but forcing some of the shoots to turn into whip shoots should slow down the spread by quite a bit.
I think that once again Steve you are not in a position to make this claim. Unless you mean of course that the particular rhizome that gets turned into a whip shoot can no longer count as 'spread'. Your experience with this is extremely limited - more than my experience with it, but still limited - and your climate is not bamboo friendly such as Bthew's is so you have no idea at all if your statement is correct.
Brad Salmon, zone 12B Kea'au, HI
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bamboothew
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Re: Rhizomes 2012

Post by bamboothew »

I've never tried that, but I don't particularly like the looks of whipshoots either. In fact, unless I was planning on using the whip for propagation I would probably lop it to ground level--well, maybe not on such a young plant as this one.

Anyway, my weather is still plenty warm enough for rhizome growth here so I wonder that if I did that it is possible that a bud somewhere back along that rhizome may be induced to fire and produce another rhizome, as sometimes happens when a rhizome is pruned? I have no idea, just a thought.

Btw, I also have a Phyllostachys humilis rhizome that has surfaced several feet from a pot of it that I have sitting in my nursery area. Ms. Rickel would just love my yard :lol:
God Bless,

Matthew

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Genesis 2:8 And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there He put the man whom He had formed.
stevelau1911
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Re: Rhizomes 2012

Post by stevelau1911 »

I think that once again Steve you are not in a position to make this claim. Unless you mean of course that the particular rhizome that gets turned into a whip shoot can no longer count as 'spread'. Your experience with this is extremely limited - more than my experience with it, but still limited - and your climate is not bamboo friendly such as Bthew's is so you have no idea at all if your statement is correct.
If his rhizome running capability of bamboos is 10X greater than it is here, then maybe one way of stopping them is to turn them all up, but if that's the case, he might as well rhizome prune. Then there might be the hydra effect where you take away 1 rhizome tip, and 3 take its place :alien:

I really only have to force about 1/4 of the rhizomes to whip shoot here on a very aggressive runner to nearly halt them all, but it is interesting to find out if that works in an ideal growing climate where photosynthesis occurs at a much faster pace.
Anyway, my weather is still plenty warm enough for rhizome growth here so I wonder that if I did that it is possible that a bud somewhere back along that rhizome may be induced to fire and produce another rhizome, as sometimes happens when a rhizome is pruned? I have no idea, just a thought.
This seems to happen when I turn a rhizome into a whip shoot early in the year, but it's not happening on my spectabilis whip shoots in the earlier picture that are just starting to leaf out now. They might already be viable divisions, but I think I'll leave them on for a lot longer so they grow their own rhizomes, and become strong divisions.
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Re: Rhizomes 2012

Post by johnw »

Doe sthe growing tip on the end of a rhizome usually freeze or rot off diuring the winter in colder climates like ours? And does this cause other buds to form on either side of the same rhizome? I still don't quite understand why Phyllostachys generally are so compact in the UK, are the rhizome tips or whole sections rotting in their damp winters. Here they can run like hell so why? I assume those tips are surely freezing or rotting here too....

johnw
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