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Hello,

I checked my various fargesia species today and found that deer (presumably) had folded, spindled and mutilated about a dozen shoots total on four different plants. One in particular I had very high hopes for this year, and it had 5 damaged. Three of the plants were planted in April 2018, one this past April (all #5 size at planting). Most of the damaged shoots have about 4-6 inches left.

Question is can/will these shoots recover and grow back to something near their original potential, or is the damage permanent? Thank you.

Mike

Mike, greetings, if the tip of the shoot is nibbled or snapped off that shoot is done going up. If it happens to a shoot that has some height before the damage it may branch out below that damage point but in general a shoot is done for if the tip is whacked.

Thanks for the response. I had a new container of repellent sitting around. Going forward I'll be using it more regularly.

So a followup - I guess I'll find out soon enough, but given that the shoots were probably 1/3 to 1/2 full size when damaged, should I expect a few new shoots to come up this summer using the energy that would have finished the lost ones, or is shooting done for the year?

Mike T.

On my groves (with several escaped rhizomes), after I knocked over all out-of-bounds shoots the plant put out a few more shoots a few more times. It won't go on all summer though.
My Phyllostachys aureosulcata (Yellow Groove) shoots late April. A couple of days ago it sent out another shoot in an area I've removed shoots 2-3 times already. This is probably the last one though.

That being said, I just remembered that you said Fargesia -- many of the species in that group will put out another flush of shoots at the end of the summer or early autumn.