Phyllostachys aureosulcata Seeds | Yellow Groove Bamboo
LATIN NAME: Phyllostachys aureosulcata
COMMON NAME: Yellow Groove Bamboo
Plant Profile
Yellow groove bamboo is a running bamboo of six to nine metres with green culms that carry a yellow groove on one side of each internode, hence the name. The culms are upright at the base and arch at the top, and the leaves are narrow and held in loose sprays.
It comes from eastern China and it is the commonest running bamboo in Western gardens, planted for screens, for stakes and for its edible shoots. The cultivar Spectabilis is the one usually sold, and it has the brightest yellow sulcus against a green culm. The culm sheaths are striped and hairy, and they fall soon after the shoot has hardened, leaving a clean green stem.
Science & Biotechnology
The species is monocarpic: a stand flowers once, sets seed and dies, and the cycle for this genus runs between sixty and a hundred and twenty years. All the plants of a clone, wherever they are in the world, tend to flower at the same time, because they are divisions of the same individual. That is why bamboo seed appears in trade in bursts and then vanishes for decades.
Spread is by rhizome, not by seed. The underground stem runs several metres a year in loose soil, and a new culm emerges from a bud at a node. A culm reaches its full height in a single season and never grows taller afterwards, which is why a bamboo grove looks established after two years and is still thin at the base.
Uses & Benefits
The culms are used for stakes, for plant supports, for fishing rods and for woven panels, and they split cleanly for use in basketwork. The shoots are eaten in China and in Japan, boiled and then stir-fried, though they are more bitter than those of the better culinary species and need longer cooking.
The plant is grown as a screen and as a specimen, and it is one of the few bamboos hardy enough for a cold garden, surviving minus twenty. It is also planted for erosion control on banks, where the rhizome mat holds soil through heavy rain.
Growing from Seed
Seed is rare and often old by the time it is sold, so expect a low rate. Sow on the surface of a moist, free-draining mix at twenty degrees and keep it humid; germination takes two to six weeks. A seedling makes thin culms for three years before it begins to run.
Plant out in sun or light shade in moist, fertile soil, and install a barrier of high-density polythene sixty centimetres deep around the clump before planting, since retrofitting one is impossible. Water in dry spells in the first two seasons. Cut the old culms to the ground in spring to encourage new ones, and harvest shoots when they are twenty centimetres tall.
Our Take
A hardy running bamboo for a screen or for stakes, and one that needs a barrier installed before it is planted, not after. Eat the shoots young and boiled.
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