Did you see any developing culms,whitish triangular cone shaped things on the runners? They will come up this year. Otherwise it will take a year for them to develop culms , may be more. This is my understanding. Culms break ground in Texas in March. I just dug up rhizomes of black bamboo and cut off the parts that had the cute itty bitty culmy thingies on the roots. The culms are now starting to break ground. My knowledge is not scientifically based but just an observation of what happened to me.Others on this form will know more than me.

Most of root cuttings had the little white triangle visible at least, a couple of them had about 1/2 inch triangles.
So hopefully some of them may take.

thanks,
xman

They can be grown from chunks of rhizome, but my success rate has been about 1 in 4. Further, if it does grow, it will probably take 5 years for it to be as tall as you. That's why the extra labor involved in digging up a rootball with one or more attached culms is preferred.

Last year, I planted black bamboo rhizomes to fill in between the proper culms that had been planted a few weeks prior. The culms that grew up from the rhizome were indeed small - two feet tall, with pencil-diameter culms. They did fill in quite nicely, however; and, this year, I expect them to at least double in size.

There was one bit of rhizome that seems to have died...but I won't count it out yet. In early May, it sent up a single culm, five inches tall and very skinny. Then, two nights of 30°F killed the shoot. We'll see what happens in the next few weeks.

Josh

Last Dec. I did some root pruning on my Phy. dulcis. Some of the rhizomes were 8 feet long. Couln't just throw them on the burn pile so I gave some away, replanted some in a different area and cut some into 10 inch pieces (so they would fit in a 5 gal. planter). all those in planters went into the green house. so far 5 of 9 are shooting, but like Kudzu says I don't expect too much out of them for a couple of years....side note.. veggie plants also growing fast in greenhouse. I love the anticipation this time of year. woo-hoo I think I can hear the moso trying to bust out

Thanks for the replies. I will wait and see if any of the cuttings take. Since I have a small yard and the bamboo is in containers, I prefer that they stay small. When I was getting these rhizomes, there were a lot of pencil thin new shoots about 2 - 3 feet tall, I am assuming that these are new shoots from this year. The strange thing was all these pencil thin shoot were shining black in color, no green.
In fact I checked all the culms in the grove and most of them were black, and all the new shoots were black too. I was under the assumption that the black bamboo is usually green for the first year or two.

xman

I checked today, and saw tiny pencil thin clums about 1/2 inch above the soil level. The rhizomes were planted in pine bark with not fertilization, should I use some dilute liquid fertilizer like dynagro? or should I let it go for a few weeks?

thanks

Hi,

I have a number of shoots coming up, they have reached about 18 inches. All the new shoots are real skinny and soft, and all of them are flopping/bending over. What is wrong??

thanks,
xman

xman-
Maybe nothing is wrong. As I mentioned above, you won't get very significant growth for several years. The flopping over is characteristic of juvenile growth in many types of bamboo, including nigra. If the shoot looks otherwise ok, that's just the way it is at this stage.

I am curious, though, about shoot color, because I've never heard of nigra producing black shoots. You are right that nigra typically comes up green and then slowly turns black in a year or two. Here is a picture of what a nigra shoot looks like (although this is a bigger shoot than what you're getting).

Here is a link that might be useful: Ph. nigra shoot

Kudzu,

Thanks for the reply, hopefully they are ok. All the shoots that I am getting are green. The place that I got these root cuttings from had culms that were pencil thin but fully black, now I am not sure if they were new shoots or shoots from last year that were just thin.

thanks,
xman

I don't think anything's wrong, either.
My first year shoots - those that grew from rhizome cuttings - were very floppy. I tied some of them up.
This year, the culms look significantly thicker. The tallest is about sixteen inches.

Josh