Am I in for trouble?

14 years ago

Sigh...

I had no idea bamboo flowered. Mine did. By the time I realized what was happening, I had hundreds of seeds all over my garden. Then we got all that rain. Am I soon going to have hundreds of small bamboo plants all over my yard?

I searched this site and all I can find is threads about how hard y'all work to germinate these seeds. So I am hoping this stuff isn't like Bermuda grass.

I'm not sure what kind of bamboo I have. I bought it on the recommendation of the salesperson at Bamboo Sorcery about 12 years ago. It is clumping, about 10 feet tall, and has beautiful lime green 1-inch culms that turn golden with age. I planted two plants next to each other, and oddly enough, only one is flowering. The other one has started putting out much thicker culms than before.

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Comments (2)

kentuck_8b
14 years ago
Sounds like you may have Bambusa multiplex 'Golden Goddess' or one of the other multiplexes. They have been known to go to seed under certain conditions.

Al Karr seeds seem to be readily available but even if your seeds come up, they would never take over like bermuda grass, they are very slow to reach large size, and without care, most, if not all, will NOT survive.

You have nothing to worry about, but you have an excellent opportunity to look for some genetic diversity in your bamboos offspring, if you want to spend a little time caring for any young plants that may germinate.

Kt
marie_louise
Original Author
14 years ago
Whew, thanks. I was so afraid I'd be weeding out bamboo for the rest of my days.

My best guess is that it is Golden Goddess. I have Alphonse Karr elsewhere in my yard-but this is different.