Not AGAIN! Phyllostacys Nigra flowering again.

[Black Dog]

It’s exactly a year today that I started this post. Flowering bamboo is a very slow process. My bamboo plants are still maturing their seeds. Most of the leaves have dropped but the plants seem to be alive. One is definitely still alive because it’s actually popped up a few small shoots and I don’t think they from germinating seeds, they appear to be from the existing plant. So fingers crossed I don’t loose the lot.

[dependable]

In my limited experience with Phyllostachys flowering, the young non flowering "survival shoots" that came up on periphery of the grove survived, and eventually regenerated the parts of the grove where they were allowed to, as well as a couple of new groves where they were transplanted. Anything that came up and still flowered eventually died.

[Black Dog]

Just an update on this slow slow process of flowering bamboo. I’ve never had bamboo before so this is a learning experience for me.
My bamboo is still not finished dropping its seeds. One small pot seems to have died but I’ve still got 4 large pots with growing bamboo in them. There’s still many thousands of seeds on canes and many more have dropped. I’ve tried to put lots of them back into the posts around their parent plants.
Some of the plants have popped up new shoots but quite a few have seeds on them, so I assume they will eventually die off, BUT! Some new shoots don’t have seeds so I’m hopeful that they’re new plants and will continue to live. I don’t want to dig them out and repot just yet for fear of killing them. We’re heading into Autumn here so I’ll wait until they’re dormant.

[Black Dog]

It’s Springtime down under. Update on my 4 pots of Phyllostacys Nigra. Good news is they’re all still alive! Bad news is for the third year in a row now I see some new shoots with flowers on them.

I’ve noticed the seed heads from last season look fuller than the first crop so I’m wondering if they might actually produce viable seeds. I’ve also noticed that in a couple of pots there’s clusters with seeds and other separate clusters in the same pot with no seeds. While all the remaining bamboo spikes are small, one cluster is putting up 2 shoots that will be much bigger. They’ll be the first in a couple of years so every day I go out to see if they have flowers and so far I’m not seeing any. So fingers crossed I will have some bamboo survive. Then I won’t have to worry for the next century or so.