p. nigra will run very deep in our sandy soils.
my one runner experiment strengthened my commitment to clumpers.
in just one season my nigra put out runners ten feet long and the tips were thirty inches deep. way too deep for traditional rhizome pruning.

after seeing a tv special on dennis weaver's earthship style home we thought about trying here. could not find a builder who didn't think we were nuts.this was about 15 years ago, but i think the reaction would be the same now.

if you are in a warm enough spot the V wamin can be an amazing specimen.for a brief time it was my favorite. the last three years it has been a mostly brown bush waist high.
anything under 30 and it takes a big hit.

chungii in florida can reach 40'.
that is actually measured not guesstimated.

oops,
my richard waldron has been a disappointment so far, always looks unhappy, although i have heard of others having much better results.

i generally buy the big guys, but have been thinking about the textilis RG dwarf. i dont have the barbaletta(or however you spell it) but the regular chungii is beautiful and one of my best performers. here, wamins top kill almost every year, they do come back but look poorly too much of the time. i...

thats big enough foe a large compost pile as well.
more free heat and compost too.

tropical bamboo nursery( who i have been very happy with)lists a B multiplex 'silverstripe corkscrew'.
anyone familiar with this?
the claim is that all culms grow in a spiral.
they have been such a reliable source for me that i never even questioned it.
might have to order one just to confirm.

The RW does not do well here. Have one that gets about 4hours of direct sun in the summer and almost none in the winter. It shoots well but always looks ratty and about half the culms die every year. It is not upsizing significantly. The other is under the oak canopy and gets dappled light all day. ...

I never could get the hang of that.I find it much easier to upload to a photo bucket account, then just copy the IMG code into my post.my kids got tired of trying to teach me the other way.

Most of my boos are under canopy except for the Lako which I thought was getting a preferred spot, and d.giganteus which to date is my only complete kill.
A pattern is emerging...,hmmm.

Just looked up my Lako info and it turns out I planted it in 2003. It is the same size today as it was then. It is planted on the southeast side of some large oaks, just outside of the canopy. It theory it would be wind protected and get the early morning sun, but it just wasn't enough. Dug it up th...

Oops
It's actually the viridivittata inversa.

Bambusa eutuldoides viridivittata

We have had much less cold than last year, but the damage is already worse. Might also have been because one night we had significant wind. Lako top killed again. Hamiltonii 90 percent burn. Parker giant 80 percent burn. Brandisii 70 percent burn. Vulgaris wamiin top killed. Oddly, standard vulgaris...