Here's an update with better lighting. How much energy does it actually take to generate tons of leaves?
I would expect it to be well less than it would to put out an entire culm, and then leaf all of those buds out of a similar size. I think the leaves and small branches produced may account for as much as 20% of the energy requirement of the production of a culm, and if the bamboo runs out of energy, wasting too much on the production of culm mass, the leafing is usually reduced since the production of the leaves for that year almost always needs to come from stored energy of the previous year. This means that a giant shoot too early on may not be all that beneficial since bigger culms do not necessarily always have more leaves.
This year, I am seeing more leaf buds than ever on bicolor, but a lot of other bamboos have their branches fried off, but have their culm intact so it will be interesting if the absence of energy going towards leaf buds would be a plus for the shoots. Perhaps the photosynthesis gained from leaves in the spring cancels that out and more.
Here is some more elongation.
