To clear cut or not ?

[jd.]

I was wondering the same thing if there is any benefit to removing this blonde culm or leaving it since there are only 5 total.

Removing a culm with dead leaves can benefit the bamboo in the spring if it is blocking sunlight from the remaining green and undamaged leaves. Bamboo shoots are driven by a combination of energy and resources stored from last season and collected in the spring before shoots emerge.

In areas visited by high winds, a network of existing culms can shield tender new culm shoots from wind damage. Old culms can provide support whether dead or alive.

In this case with four surviving culms the damaged culm seems redundant, but you may still keep it if you're curious.

[stevelau1911]

Here's a better view of what I consider to be perfectly alive against what would be marginally dead or just dead. It's pretty easy to distinguish between them because up close, you can see that whatever has life in it will seem to have a glow, or juice flowing through the branches and up into the buds. Right now this is showing some buds that have just started swelling up a little bit, but haven't begun elongation yet. Leaf buds on most bamboos do tend to fatten up a bit before they send out their spears to form new branches and leaves.







Even though some branches on the top of this picture appear to still have some color, the section before that which has dried out usually means that the rest of it is no longer viable.

[dependable]

F robusta, probably has most of its buds killed. But it has a lot plant energy in culms to support this spring's shoots.

It would be easier to cut down now, but at what cost to plant vigor?

Anyone know if all new shoots will be in outer perimeter of clump? With a runner, they could be anywhere, but if shoots on Fargesa will be on outside, later pruning won't be that hard, but plant may look funny.

What would you do. As I mentioned earlier, shooting energy stored in culms, not just rhizomes.

This plant seems like a good case to illustrated the cut or no cut dilemma. I have several species that present this problem to varying degrees. Most of the others, such as P nigra, have a few green leaves down low and in interior, so it is an easy decision to wait and see.

I can see why one would just want to mow them, cleaning them up any other way will be a lot of work if you have a lot of bamboo.

[jd.]

But it has a lot plant energy in culms to support this spring's shoots.

I wonder how much damage a Fargesia bamboo can tolerate before exposed culms cease to provide a benefit to new shoots.

It would be easier to cut down now, but at what cost to plant vigor?

You could run an experiment, clear cut half of the grove, and observe the count and quality of the new shoots on each half.

[stevelau1911]

This was not a purposeful experiment, but my moso grove back in 2011 was almost completely top killed on the south facing side while the north facing side was only about 50% leaf burned with hardly any top kill.

I found that on the south side, those shoots only got between 1/2 inch and 5/8 inches in diameter however there seemed to be a lot of them, generally falling into the 3-5ft range in height. This was about the same size of the previous year's culms.

The shoots on the north side came emerged were much more sparse however the shoot size was closer to 3/4 inches in diameter, rising up to 5-8ft in height. Based on my observation a lot of winter damage seems to result in smaller, but more plentiful shoots likely because the apical dominance of the existing culms are weakened. It seems comparable to the pruning of a fruit tree where cutting off the leader will allow other branches to form, but in bamboo it's just on a bigger scale.

[dependable]

There seems to be no reason that carbohydrates in culms pictured above will not be available to shoots. They may all be available since plant may not be able to grow new leaves due to damaged buds.

I don't see any point in experimenting with this one plant, as I want it to come back evenly, and it is one plant. If I had two of them in same shape, it would be more meaningful.

I am planning to experiment with some similarly burnt P japonica, of which I have a lot. This specimen seemed like a good one to make the point that there is potential growth energy in 'them there' damaged culms.

[needmore]

I recall the painstaking process of carefully cutting out dead F rufa culms as new shoots indeed emerged in the center of the clump so an easy post-shoot culling was not an option. I have large piles of culled culms around here all ready and am nearly done with the pre-shooting clean up, some species will be left with dead culms to be painstakingly removed later but it sure is easier to clear-cut now on the species where that is appropriate.

[johnw]

Can't in fact dead or badly damaged culms transport anything? I suppose the question is really what is damage and what parts of the culms have been killed - storage or delivery parts? Is it the very vessels that transport water etc? I'm thinking does all that stored energy just go kaput like that strip loin in my stomach when I croak?

johnw

[dependable]

I'll will choose my battles about saving damaged culms for the sake of future shoots, as hand pruning later will be time consuming.

Looking at the Fargesa I pictured above, the culms themselves are in pretty good shape, with living green tissue in all except the tops.

I would think this topic would apply the most for people with smaller plants in the colder zones, going against the elements, trying to get temperate boos to grow near the arctic.

[needmore]

Maybe cull the center of the clump now and leave a perimeter? I've got the annoying problem with my F rufa, they are dead down to 30-40% of the height then green leaves so a brutal topping is in order on them all I suspect.

[Matt W]

Thanks for all the interest. Decided to cut most of it but leave a few just in case. Here is where I'm at with it now. I couldn't really tell when cutting the culms if they were dead or not. There seemed to be very little moisture.

[stevelau1911]

Just wondering, is there any way to get a ton of small shoots from a bamboo if it hasn't been badly damaged or top killed?

I wished I knew how to get this to occur naturally without taking away energy from the plant. Perhaps dwarfing massive shoots would lead to energy dispersal which would allow energy to be distributed to even more shoots however the downside is that a lot of energy may also flow into the leafing out of existing culms too, and once the soil temperature gets too high which is usually around late May here for most bamboos, the effort towards shoots will cease, and be transitioned over to either leafing out or rhizome production.

Perhaps a high shot of nitrogen may trigger the response. Cytokinin may be effective, but I'm not sure if it could stop a bamboo that already has fairly large shoot buds formed already.

[Tarzanus]

Try plant horomones. Gibberellins are breaking dormancy, Auxins promote above ground growth and Cytokinins promote branching and root growth. I think you need Cytokinins which travel from growing tip of the plant that gets damaged, do some root growth and when the plant heals itself, hormones go back to the upper part of the plant and promote branching. Same thing will most likely happen with rhizome buds - you should trigger bud maturing process and a lot of smaller shoots.

Never did any of that....

Make sure you read about plant hormones and use appropriate amounts of hormone, too much will have no effect or it will even work just the opposite.

I wished I knew how to get this to occur naturally without taking away energy from the plant...

If you induce shooting, branching or whatever, you will take away it's energy. Uncontrolled shooting might take a lot of energy and many shoots could abort, whole plant might suffer. I don't think you should play with "shooting spree" during the spring shooting - wait at least a couple of months for all the shoots to leaf-out.

[needmore]

Just wondering, is there any way to get a ton of small shoots from a bamboo if it hasn't been badly damaged or top killed?

I wished I knew how to get this to occur naturally without taking away energy from the plant. Perhaps dwarfing massive shoots would lead to energy dispersal which would allow energy to be distributed to even more shoots however the downside is that a lot of energy may also flow into the leafing out of existing culms too, and once the soil temperature gets too high which is usually around late May here for most bamboos, the effort towards shoots will cease, and be transitioned over to either leafing out or rhizome production.

Perhaps a high shot of nitrogen may trigger the response. Cytokinin may be effective, but I'm not sure if it could stop a bamboo that already has fairly large shoot buds formed already.

Rhizome prune before shooting season up close'ish to the main clump...