Zen in the garden
Fast-growing bamboo is good for environment, has multiple uses and looks exotic, too
I T’S been called the fastest-growing woody plant on the planet. One species has been clocked racing skyward as much as 4 feet a day.
When a bamboo culm, or shoot, pops through the soil, it will soar to more than 95 percent of its mature height in six to eight weeks. That means a new shoot emerging in a 60-foot-tall grove will catch up to the other guys in no time.
To environmentalists distraught over global loss of habitat, erosion and poor air quality, bamboo is a regreening godsend.
A bamboo grove generates more oxygen than the equivalent stand of trees.
To embittered neighbors faced with a stream of unwanted shoots from the other side of the fence, though, bamboo is the plant from hell. “Dam-boo,” they complain on Facebook. Asian cultures have long revered bamboo and used it as a source of food, medicine, garden elements and building supplies. The Wright brothers used it to build their flyer.
But there are gardeners today who mow, chop and pour herbicides on unwanted shoots with one thought in mind: to kill the beast.
For all its many uses — scaffolding, furniture, window blinds, musical instruments and eating utensils — why is there such a chasm between bamboo advocates and opponents? It seems to come down to a badapple-in-the-barrel tale of two types — the runners and the clumpers.
Running bamboos (monopodial) spread by underground rhizomes that push up new shoots at great distances from
the original rootstock. Some running cultivars are not invasive, but the aggressive horizontal travelers draw ire. Temperature, light, soil fertility and moisture all play a part in just how fast rhizomes travel.
Clumping bamboos (sympodial) are genetically unable to run unchecked; rather, they expand slowly each year and generally in inches rather than feet.
Rampant running types have left a nasty impression. But given better-behaved bamboos, more gardeners are seeing the beauty of these graceful grasses in the movement and filtered light they bring to the garden. And those who have caught the wind whispering through the leaves and rattling the hollow, round culms might succumb to a bamboo’s charms on a mystical note.
There are at least 90 bamboo genera and 1,000-plus species; plants range from mere inches tall to towering giants of more than 100 feet. Foliage size ranges from a half-inch to more than a foot. The handsome culms — the jointed, usually hollow, round canes (or stems) — may be green, blue, gold or black.
Such diversity is not surprising, considering there are bamboos that grow in tropical forests and at alpine heights.
There are two native to this country: Arundinacea gigantea, which we Southerners know as canebrake bamboo, and the smaller A. tecta, used for fishing poles and cattle fodder.
You can see bamboo in public gardens. It’s an important element in Japanese gardens, and Frederick Law Olmsted planted numerous varieties at the Biltmore Estate in North Carolina.
Depending on the species, bamboo is useful in the home garden as a screen, hedge, ground cover or specimen. Strong, but flexible, bamboo is shelter for birds.
A version of this story appeared previously in the Houston Chronicle.