A new bamboo has set flower…

Well much to my surprise, while working in the garden I noted one of my bamboos looked peculiar.  Upon closer inspection I noted that this particular bamboo had started flowering!  As crazy as it sounds, I thought perhaps it was perhaps due to the shock I sent the plant through, as this was  culm that grew from the remnants of a clump that I had thought I had eradicated from my yard (purely for aesthetic reasons).  However, a few days later, while working on the other side of yard I noted the same bamboo (I have several of each kind in  my yard) was also in flower!  So now I started thinking this was not just a freak accident but could be something bigger.  I later sent emails to those that had received some divisions of this particular bamboo from me, and of the three that replied, one did indeed have bamboo in flower as well!

So what this means is that this is the beginning of what could be a gregarious flowering of all bamboos of this type with the same DNA strain.  Typically bamboo is distributed from divisions of a mother plant, since bamboo only flowers and sets seed only once in it’s lifetime before dying (the same holds true for different types of palms as well).  The flowering and seed production can last several years before the bamboo ultimately succumbs to the will of Mother Nature.  However, in that time frame, the bamboo plant will have set out thousands of seed producing the next generation of it’s kind.

With this bamboo being in seed I have now born witness to four different varieties of bamboo in seed.  One variety I harvested with a fellow boonut are doing well at on my brother’s property in Central Florida (I believe it to be a Bambusa Multiplex variety).  The other which I previously posted about was from an attempted culm cutting and subsequently died.  The remaining two belong to a a friend who has an extensive collection locally, with one now going on it’s third year of producing seed.  I’ve also bought Moso seed and have hundreds of plants growing on my brother’s property along with one in a pot in my backyard.  A visitor of this website also sent me some seed from her bamboo that was flowering, and I have yet to try an germinate it (though I don’t know what I’m waiting for).

Anyways, here’s the pictures of my bamboo flowering.  I’m really hoping to get some viable seed from it, and will post some status updates over the next few months.