The state of Connecticut eyeing bamboo for invasive status

[rcb]

I like the questions it tells you to ask when buying a house.

Like if I ever sell this place, it will be worth the laugh just to see a buyer scared off by the thought of maintaining the bamboo -- when everything else out there is more work (and costs actual money) to keep up.

[Alicat59]

Unfortunately try living in the same town as the leading voice against bamboo and trying to sell your house with bamboo on the property. I can easily see "someone" contacting any realtor we would use and scaring them off, if they didn't know any better. Or worse, harassing any potential buyers into not wanting to buy. Thankfully we aren't planning on selling for many years.

The institute's new tactic is to try and get real estate agents on it's side. They've been posting that if bamboo ever existed on the property that it's unsellable. Funny, because that's actually one of the reasons we bought this house.

[stevelau1911]

I just went onto their page and found this video.




It does look like it would take all day if you were to just use a simple shovel when the soil is completely dry and get pretty exhausted, but it's quite a bit different when you have a steel broadfork under super wet conditions where it usually takes minimal effort to rip out rhizomes, or entire root masses. It wouldn't take very long with a chain saw, or sawzilla to take down the entire grove to the soil, but if I were on this removal project, I would simply take down every culm down to soil level, and only broadfork out the stuff underneath permanent structures.

For any pieces that are in the open and not under a fence or other structures, there's also no need to even touch those rhizomes since they can be mowed over. If this guy rhizome prunes this every year, and wastes his time in ripping them out, it will take a lot of time in effort as opposed to just severing the connection in a line so that any rhizome not attached to photosynthesis producing culms can go into survival mode, and waste away after it keeps getting mowed.

Alicat, would you be able to locate where they are?

[Alicat59]

Unfortunately I have no idea where these "infestations" she reports are located. I know in her listings on EDDMaps she occasionally puts coordinates. But that's about it. I think this is the listing that video refers to. http://www.eddmaps.org/distribution/poi ... id=2684848

And what you mentioned is what we plan to do to our grove. Take everything down to soil level and then mow from then on and if any rhizomes try and advance, chop them and yank them up. It really shouldn't be too bad. We planned on doing it earlier but we've had one unexpected project after another that needed to be worked on.

[dependable]

I like the questions it tells you to ask when buying a house.

Like if I ever sell this place, it will be worth the laugh just to see a buyer scared off by the thought of maintaining the bamboo -- when everything else out there is more work (and costs actual money) to keep up.

If I ever sell my place, am sure that the landscape, including bamboo, will make make the place more valuable to those of outdoor sensibilities and good taste...(;

[FabricHog]

“Many pieces of legislation are started from a constituents request. Caryn was instrumental in providing information and details about the issue and was a grassroots organizer in having others afflicted with the problem to pursue legislation. There were several legislators who had constituents contact them about the problem in their own districts,” Conroy said in an e-mail.

http://valley.newhavenindependent.org/a ... ng_bamboo/ (linked from http://valley.newhavenindependent.org/a ... bamboo_law)

Amazingly enough Conroy said at a town meeting she would visit Rickel’s neighbor’s home to see the situation for herself. Unfortunately she couldn’t find the time to see BOTH sides of view and yet she had ample time to listen to “facts”, “details” and “information” from someone who so obviously has a vendetta against their neighbors, who is less than credible and who has an illegal business and co-sponsor a bill that has since become a law without seeing other peoples’ points of view.

Apparently laws in CT are based solely on a squeaky wheel rather than facts and common sense. I’m still scratching my head that someone in Bozrah claims bamboo had grown up between the siding of her garage and actually through the roof of a building seemingly overnight. Why is this not considered negligence on the homeowner’s part, because I do not believe for an instant bamboo can grow like the magic bean in “Jack and the Beanstalk” and no one noticed it previously? That is laughable.

[foxd]

I’m still scratching my head that someone in Bozrah claims bamboo had grown up between the siding of her garage and actually through the roof of a building seemingly overnight. Why is this not considered negligence on the homeowner’s part, because I do not believe for an instant bamboo can grow like the magic bean in “Jack and the Beanstalk” and no one noticed it previously? That is laughable.

If it's the picture I'm thinking of it has me scratching my head too. If I had wanted to fake a picture like that what I would do is dig up a rhizome with some small whip shoots on it, rinse off the dirt and push it up under the vinyl trim mear the roof line while still wet. It would duplicate the cut end of the rhizome in the picture and would even duplicate where the dirty stream of water ran down the siding.

[foxd]

FYI - http://caselaw.findlaw.com/ct-court-of- ... 41233.html

Does anyone speak lawyer to translate?

[foxd]

I’m still scratching my head that someone in Bozrah claims bamboo had grown up between the siding of her garage and actually through the roof of a building seemingly overnight. Why is this not considered negligence on the homeowner’s part, because I do not believe for an instant bamboo can grow like the magic bean in “Jack and the Beanstalk” and no one noticed it previously? That is laughable.

If it's the picture I'm thinking of it has me scratching my head too. If I had wanted to fake a picture like that what I would do is dig up a rhizome with some small whip shoots on it, rinse off the dirt and push it up under the vinyl trim mear the roof line while still wet. It would duplicate the cut end of the rhizome in the picture and would even duplicate where the dirty stream of water ran down the siding.

She has the picture back up on her "Institute" Facebook page so I took a real close look at it. Definitely would be easy enough for someone to stage a photo like that. I saved a copy so she can't "disappear" it.

[stevelau1911]

It does seem like there are a lot of people interested in knowing how to get rid of bamboo. It may seem like common sense for experienced gardeners, horticultural experience, or has grown bamboo for a while on how to eradicate or at least control it with ease, but this may not be common sense to the general public.

Based on my blog post views, it really seems like bamboo removal is a very hot topic as it is getting lots of views. Here's the graph.

[foxd]

I just stumbled across the testimony to the Connecticut Legislature. It is rather disappointing to realize just how much of the testimony was based on Rickel's sick fantasies being quoted as fact by others. Here is a link to the testimony:

http://search.cga.state.ct.us/dtsearch_ ... &Item=8175

And here is a quote of Rickel spewing:

REP. GENTILE: Caryn Rickel. Karen will be followed by Senator McKinney. Did you say he was here?

A VOICE: No.

REP. GENTILE: Okay. And Representative Grogins is not here.

CARYN RICKEL: (Inaudible) Senate Bill 1016 to regulate Phyllostachys aureosulcata, running bamboo, yellow groove. My name is Caryn Rickel of 13 Edgehill Terrace in Seymour, Connecticut. I am the founder of the Institute of Invasive Bamboo Research. Yellow groove invasive bamboo is like cancer to land.

The Hiroshima bomb did not even kill Phyllostachys. In fact, it flourished just a few days later. To grow this bamboo is the equivalent of owning a Siberian tiger that will escape causing great harm and contamination of land. Some have compared this to oil leaking from an underground oil tank, environmental contamination of land.

I support the intent of this bill but also to specify that liability be assigned to the bamboo grower each time the bamboo invades as recommended by the Invasive Plants Council in their last annual report dated December 2012. Yellow groove invasive bamboo destroys everything in its path.

Yellow groove is a prehistoric grass that evolved to survive in the forest 40 million years ago. Yellow groove bamboo is the homeowner's worst nightmare. It grows taller and thicker each successive year and picks up speed as it invades underground. What you and your neighbors are really getting is a 45-foot-high giant timber bamboo forest with an astonishing growth rate which invades rapidly underground in all directions.

The highly destructive rhizomes move underground all connected to take over more land each year. One plant can travel 9.3 miles per the Federal U.S. Data Report and is scientifically considered one organism. It is virtually impossible to confine as the grove matures. I have images of rhizomes invading 27 inches deep.

The plastic will not stop a mature grow. Barriers fail fast and must encircle the planting at the time of planting. It only takes one escaped rhizome to contaminate a property. It trespasses first underground undetected each late summer by deep rhizomes. The bamboo then goes dormant until the following spring.

From late spring through June the spikes shoot. They grow almost two feet per day. This is like a sci-fi horror show. This is a continual horror show. Each year's invasion is thicker and more destructive than the year before. Yellow groove is an alien, non-native invasive, non-indigenous to our continent. The damages are continual and cannot be measured in one occurrence.

The invasion is every year, increasing in size and destruction each year. An attorney told me some time ago the law did not catch up to the plant. We are now far along in the research that was previously lacking in the USA. The continual property damages caused by yellow groove Phyllostachys aureosulcata bamboo are widespread in the state of Connecticut. Thank you. Thank you for this opportunity to speak today on behalf of the Senate Bill 1016.

SENATOR MEYER: Thank you.

CARYN RICKEL: Thank you.

SENATOR MEYER: But let me ask you this, because you sound like an expert. I gather that there are other kinds of bamboo than running bamboo or yellow bamboo. Is that right, and how prevalent in Connecticut? We have some bamboo on our place, and I'm just wondering if it's yellow, running or yellow.

When the big storm came in a month ago, we had about three feet of snow, it completely knocked it down, the bamboo down, and it looked like it broke the stalk at the end, you know, the little trunk at the end. And I can't believe what I've seen in the last week as it's come back.

CARYN RICKEL: Well –-

SENATOR MEYER: So what other kinds of bamboo are there?

CARYN RICKEL: Okay. That's a very good question. You must be species specific when you're talking about yellow groove bamboo. The Latin name is, Phyllostachys means leaf and spike. Phyllostachys is the genus. Aureosulcata, Phyllostachys aureosulcata is the species. We are only seeing Phyllostachys aureosulcata on about 310 invasions that I've logged. It's that species.

I had nine DNAs done in Pullman, Washington. They were very expensive. They did not charge me. They all came from the same rhizome piece that was moving from south to north. There's no genetic diversity on that DNA. It's, the species is Phyllostachys aureosulcata. I was the first in 2010 to discover that that was what we had in the north, so I had it added to USDA.

We confirmed that, and we finally, in 2010, stopped lumping all of the research as golden bamboo, which is Phyllostachys aurea. Phyllostachys aurea can only withstand five degrees. Phyllostachys aureosulcata is a minus 15. That's what we're seeing in the northeast. You may see Phyllostachys bissetii, but not, it's not documented as being as much.

All of the bamboo that we're seeing is Phyllostachys aureosulcata, so we do know our species now, and that was very, very important in the research and the documentation of what is invading Connecticut. It's Phyllostachys aureosulcata, yellow groove. It's been documented now. I logged them on Invasive.org.

SENATOR MEYER: So, but like you, like you have, the bamboo that we in our backyard is that kind of –-

CARYN RICKEL: No, we'd have to ID it. We'd have, we'd have, you'd have to, I'd have to, we'd have to, I have an ID manual that's being, that's actually being printed right now by Georgia University. It's very, very easy to, it's very simple with certainty to know what you have.

But with, you know, if it's 30 to 40 feet high, and it's been there a while, and it withstands, you know, these winters, it most certainly is going to be Phyllostachys. The leaves stay green. It's minus 15 cold hearty, so I'm saying it could be.

SENATOR MEYER: Okay.

CARYN RICKEL: Okay.

SENATOR MEYER: Any questions?

CARYN RICKEL: No?

SENATOR MEYER: Thank you so much.

CARYN RICKEL: Okay.

[stevelau1911]

Bamboo control's really becoming a hot topic. I think I'll have to start advertising some bamboo removal services in my area and hope that there are some people with some nasty invasions, but I really doubt that will exist in my climate. I guess it's worth a try.

If I was much closer to CT, that would make it easier. If there bamboo happens to be something special, not just plain old yellow groove, I would even consider taking all of them for divisions, or at least the culms.

[foxd]

Kind of jaw dropping that she claims to be the first to discover what most of us already knew, especially since several people had told her that Connecticut was too cold for Phyllostachys aurea to grow to any size.

So, Georgia University is printing her ID manual. I notice that invasives.org also operates from Georgia University. Could invasives.org be running the manual off on their office copier?

[johnw]

Do US universities not check the credentials of people before printing such things?

[Rufledt]

Not all of them, these are desperate times and they probably gladly took her money. Also, plenty of people with Ph.Ds are nuts. it's peer review that makes things credible by weeding out crazy stuff, and I bet her "manual" didn't get that sort of review.