Blooming Bamboo

This spring the Fargesia nitida in our garden began to bloom. Our friend Dain Sansome from Bamboo Valley was doing a workshop at the nursery and agreed to write an article regarding this uncommon phenomena. The accompanying photos show the Fargesia in bloom in our gardens.

My Bamboo is Flowering!
By Dain Sansome, Bamboo Valley © 2007 All Rights Reserved

To many people flowering bamboo means the end of a beloved screen or landscape element since the bamboo may die. However, this is not always the case. There are some things we know about bamboo flowering and some things we do not. Flowering is a rare and spectacular event, sometimes once per century or even more seldom. Flowering has been observed to begin all at once with many types of bamboo of the same species regardless of geographic location. What triggers this is yet unknown and when they will flower is also unknown. An individual culm (cane) of bamboo has a dramatically shorter life span once flowering has begun (usually one season), and generally speaking there are two habits of bamboo flowering behavior: the sporadic and the gregarious type (or local and general). Sporadic flowering is when one single cane or a few canes within a grove or clump suddenly go into flower and the rest of the plant lives on as normal. This could be an indicator of gregarious flowering in the near future, but does not necessarily mean so. Gregarious flowering is when the majority of the culms put out flowers instead of leaves, few or none of the culms put out leaves and grow as normal, and the end of that bamboo grove as is at hand. However, when viable seed is set a new generation is at hand. Also, new varieties can quickly arise as seedlings may look nothing like the parent.

Flowering is unmistakable once underway. In spring as usual, the bamboo puts up what appears to be strong healthy shoots, but instead of putting out leaves it puts out bracts of flowers which resemble those of rice or wheat. This goes on for a few years depending on the size and maturity of the original plant. Some bamboos will last many years once flowering has begun and some may last only a season or two.

It is difficult to make generalizations as to the type of flowering that will occur within bamboo genera (e.g. Phyllostahys, Fargesia, Bambusa) since individual species may have flowering patterns different from one another. For example, in the 1990s Phyllostachys flexuosa and P. aurea ‘Albostriata’ and 20 years earlier P. vivax and P. bambusoides all flowered gregariously, but P. edulis as far as we know has never gregariously yet often sporadically flowers, and P. aureosulcata ‘Spectabilis’ and P. praecox ‘Viridisulcata’ have been sporadically flowering during the past few years. The clumping bamboos of the genus Fargesia often gregariously flower and in recent years F. nitida is flowering gregariously. The trend with Fargesia’s gregarious flowering is to die off completely whereas the Phyllostachys usually recover. Unfortunately F. nitida is a very popular landscape bamboo and many of the old generation plants which have been around since the 1880s will pass away. However, the new seeds are being collected and grown by many people, and from them we already have a new generation coming along nicely.

New seedling bamboos, including that of F. nitida, are already on the market and show great potential to replace their parents. If your bamboo is flowering, appreciate it for you may never see anything like it again. You may try to grow the seeds—most germinate quickly when sown in light soil, kept moist and in bright, filtered light. The flowering of a bamboo is exciting since you never know what you may get and any space created gives way for something new.

Photos: Joy Creek Photo Archive © all rights reserved

© 2007 Joy Creek Nursery