Nice pix of your "air layering" technique. Plenty of roots there. I wonder, do you think it would work with scoring w/o the rooting hormone?

Pardon my ignorance, but why do you need rooting hormones and this whole procedure? Why not just bury the rhizome in a pot and let it take root naturally? I don't get it.

I don't know. It's "habit", I guess. I always apply rooting hormone when air layering anything. Next time, I will try without and see how the results compare. In fact, I have another one set up where I am trying to coax a rhizome into a pot. We will see how that one goes.

I saw something very interesting at a local nursery. They were propogating a very expensive, rare GIANT bamboo. They took a tall culm, pulled the top down toward the ground so the entire culm was almost parallel with the ground and tied it that way. They they split 1 gal (I think) black plastic pots, cut a hole in each side on the cut and wrapped one around each node, packed with moss, soil or something and tied it on. Basically the culm went in one side of the pot and out the other. It looked weird, There must have been 20 pots tied to this culm.

Terry

Terry,

Unautre from TX on this forum is doing the exact same thing with B tuldoides....maybe we can get an update on the progress.

Quite a few bamboos do not take to propagating via culm cuttings but do nicely by burying the whole culm or burying the culm in pots at each individual node in the way you described. B. Multiplex varieties are one such species that do best this way.

I plan on doing more experientation next spring with this method.

I thought that works mainly with tropical and subtropical bamboos, and that temperate bamboos can't be propagated vegetatively from true culms?

Yes, you are correct Cactus_joe...sorry if I confused anyone.

Cactus_joe,
It will be interesting to see how your experiment progresses. I have heard of people rooting and growing individual culms from runners but new rhizomes never formed. I tried to see if there were any rhizomes, or new shoots that did not originate from the original culm/rhizomes as branches, but could not be sure. Do you have new rhizomes or shoots? I have tried feeding adventurous rhizomes into the bottom side hole of pots and it has worked for smaller bamboo but with new larger rhizomes from S. fastuosa, Ph. vivax, and Ph. nigra 'henon' they died and rotted.

In any case good luck and let us know how it works out.

Mike near Brenham TX

Mike, that's what I meant when I implied that the experiment is incomplete. I should know by next year if new culms or rhizomes will be produced. Right now, all I can say is that there are healthy buds near the roots. I take that as a good sign.

I shall report back next year.

Nice pictures.
I am wondering if the scoring is necessary? When I have airlayered other plants they have all been dicots. The theory being that breaking the cambial layer caused carbohydrates to gather at points above the cut causing the formation of adventitious roots from undifferentiated tissue in the vascular cambium. The question being that monocots have scattered vascular bundles unlike dicots that have them in a layer. So would scoring have the same effect? Sorry if this seems incoherent I am going on about 4 hours of sleep in the last 50 hours, and my boss has demanded that we all show up to work in about 40 minutes.

ocimum_nate
Oh, boy! Your is such a task master! I work an averag of 85 hours per week, but even I have more sleep than that!

You are right, scoring is probably unnessary. But for a first attempt, I decided to throw in all the tricks. Later, I will try and omit some of the steps. In fact, I am trying one on P nigra, where I do absolutely nothing but stripe off the sheaths and trap the rhizome in a container with potting media. We will know how that one turns out next year.

I am back and only 4.5 hours of work later. I think I will try to get some sleep today. Only problem now is that I have hit my second wind and I am not feeling sleepy. Anywho gotta go.