Bamboo?

[charlie]

Spent a quick half hour today crown lifting and thinning out stems as I prefer the bare stem look but it made me wonder whether other people go about Bamboo care differently, or perhaps they just reach for the "Round up"!

[Paul S]

I do that with my bigger Phyllostachys, too, although they struggle in my climate. Unless we get a wet spell or I decide to treat them to a few soakings the new culms abort and the old ones look tatty. I've taken out several in the past couple of years in a shift to minimise watering. Many fargesia do much better in drought and, so far, a couple of borinda.

[charlie]

Interesting re Borinda, we got some nice ones off Mike Bell, but they didnt like us at all and never got going, given the mattock work each year to keep the bamboos in check I am not planning on planting more, we lost a very fine Chusquea gigantea to flowering and although I have grown on a couple of seedlings I have decided not to plant them out, (Anyone interested in giving them a new home?) and the P. niger is in flower at present so no doubt I will have to dig that out this winter (it looks terrible at the moment)

[NigelJ]

I thin out and crown lift my Phyllostachys nigra, if I remember, generally gets done in spring.
I keep expecting it to flower, but hasn't done so yet.
Local cat likes sunning itself in the shed culms and leafs.

[AndyC]

The only bamboo that I perform any crown lifting on is Borinda papyrifer as I particularly like the culm color.
I also remove the lower culm sheaths as soon as they loosen their grip.
20260723_093331 by Andy Cowlishaw, on Flickr

This bamboo is the least tolerant of drought conditions in my experience, particularly when in production of new culms. Last year I gave it no extra water and all the culms aborted.
This spring it got plenty of extra water and rewarded me with 40+ new culms.

I have also found most Fargesia species to remain healthy in dry conditions.

Not a bamboo, but a grass, Miscanthus lutarioriparius also looks better having the leaf sheaths removed to reveal the colour of the culms.
20260723_093524 by Andy Cowlishaw, on Flickr

[Paul S]

For me Borinda papyrifera is a non-starter. The 'similar' Borinda KR5600, on the other hand, is doing encouragingly well. It seems to start putting up new growth then pause it in times of drought, rather than abort it completely. I have another KR one, the number was lost back in the mists of time, that also does well now after a stuttering start. B. nujiangensis couldn't handle drought, sadly, as it is rather splendid. And I have finally given up on B. lushiensis. It didn't die, just looked rubbish all the time - when you see the perfect specimen at Tregrehan with it's feet in water no second rate versions will do.

My two stand-out Fargesias are robusta and rufa, they look fab with no extra water at all. I would have added angustissima to that list but it flowered itself to death a couple of years back. F. jiuzhaigou defoliated last year but leafed out in winter/spring so has had a stay of execution.