Bamboo

Includes growing directions and descriptions of varieties.

It was one street over and shone right into my eyes when I stepped out onto my patio. Since shooting out street lights is frowned upon in my neighborhood, I needed something to block that light. The solution was a planting of punting pole bamboo (Bambusa tuldoides) that, by the following year, was hiding the street light behind its barrier of evergreen foliage.

Bamboo can serve as a centerpiece of tropical splendor, a fast-growing screen, a neutral background or a foot-high groundcover, depending on the species you choose and how you handle it. Its roots can bind soil to prevent erosion, its branches and leaves can provide cover for wildlife and its shoots can feed people - or pandas, if you happen to have any. What's more, it can do all these things quickly. Even in Northern climates, bamboo is about the fastest-growing of our large plants.

There are perhaps 150 cultivars of various bamboo species available as ornamentals in the United States. They range from 70-foot giants with woody stems 8 inches in diameter to foot-high miniatures, such as dwarf fernleaf bamboo (Arundinaria disticha), that you can mow like grass.

Bamboos aren't grown for their flowers. Their beauty comes from their form, their foliage and its contrast with the stalks, called culms. Some varieties have variegated, white-and-green leaves. Others have culms of green, black, gold or mottled patterns resembling snakeskin.

Botanically, bamboos are giant grasses. They spread by means of underground rhizomes that send up culms. Their roots are shallow but spreading. Although most members of the group are from the tropics and subtropics, bamboo is found in China almost as far north as the Siberian border, and Japanese bamboo thrives in areas noted for their hard winters. In fact, the Japanese and Chinese prize several species for their winter foliage.

Because bamboo is rhizomatous it is easily grown well north of its normal hardiness zones by planting in a protected microclimate and mulching heavily. Although a hard freeze will kill the culms, the plant won't die if the rhizomes are protected by a thick layer of mulch. When the weather warms up new culms will shoot up. If you live where the temperature doesn't drop below minus 20 degrees, a wide selection of bamboos is available to you.

Watching bamboo grow is a remarkable experience. Most varieties, particularly those from temperate climates, have a definite one - or two - month growing season during which they put out most or all of their new culms. Once the shoots break through the ground they grow very rapidly - as much as a foot a day on some of the tropical giants. By season's end the culms will have reached their full height. Leaves are borne on branches that spring from buds at the nodes (the jointlike rings). Although a culm won't grow any taller or thicker, its foliage will get bushier as long as the culm lives, usually several years.

Regardless of what you might have heard, bamboo will not invade your pipes or crack your concrete. Some varieties, such as Japanese arrow bamboo (Pseudosasa Japonica) and many Phyllostachys species, will take over your yard, then go visit your neighbors if you let them. but these invasive tendencies can be controlled.

Unlike some other invasive plants, notably willows. bamboo will not clog pipes. Bamboo is shallow-rooted, seldom reaching down more than 2 feet for even the largest varieties. Its invasiveness is solely in its spreading.

While it is true that bamboo won't crack concrete, it will push up through asphalt paving or between bricks or flagstones that aren't laid in cement. It also goes through black polyethylene film like it isn't even there. If your bamboo is bordered by a susceptible paving, you may want to put in a barrier to control its spread.

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