Bambusoideae Seeds | Bamboo
LATIN NAME: Bambusoideae
COMMON NAME: Bamboo, General Overview
Plant Profile
In the hills of Mizoram, in northeastern India, the flowering of the bamboo Melocanna baccifera has a name of its own and a famine attached to it. The species flowers gregariously across a whole region at long, irregular intervals, then dies back and sets an enormous crop of fruit; the rodent population explodes on the surplus and the rats then turn to the rice stores. The cycle repeated in living memory in the 1950s and again around 2007, and it is the sharpest illustration of how strange bamboo reproduction really is.
Bamboos are grasses, and they divide into three groups: the Arundinarieae, the woody bamboos of temperate Asia and North America; the Bambuseae, the tropical woody bamboos; and the Olyreae, the herbaceous bamboos of the American tropics that look nothing like the giants in the garden. Not one of the three is a single genus; the subfamily is an assemblage of related grasses bound by their woody, branching culms.
Whether a bamboo clumps or runs comes down to the rhizome. Pachymorph rhizomes turn upward at each node and produce tight clumps; leptomorph rhizomes run horizontally and send up culms along their length, which is how a single planting colonises a whole border. Buy with that distinction in mind, because a running species in a small garden is a decision you cannot easily reverse.
Almost every bamboo fruit is a caryopsis, a grain that looks and behaves like a cereal seed. Melocanna baccifera is the exception: it makes a fleshy, pear-shaped fruit, the only bamboo known to do so, and that fruit is what the rats of Mizoram are eating. Most bamboo seed, in contrast, is thin and short-lived, and heavy seed years are rare enough to be a news event.
Material sold as bamboo seed is usually the caryopsis of a flowering bamboo, a grain not unlike a small rice, and it is collected in the brief window after a mass flowering before the parent clumps die. In some markets the name is used loosely for edible bamboo grain or for shoot products, so ask which you are buying. Because flowering is so irregular, seed lots are scarce and often anonymous as to species.
Science & Biotechnology
Genomics arrived late to the bamboos and then moved quickly. A reference genome for moso bamboo, the tall timber species of southern China, was published in 2013, and it was followed by work on the genes that control flowering time, the puzzle at the centre of bamboo biology. Because a clone can live for decades and then flower once and die, understanding that switch is both a scientific and a commercial problem.
Most clothing sold as bamboo is not a natural fibre. The culms are dissolved and extruded to make a viscose or lyocell filament, a regenerated cellulose chemically close to rayon, which is why the fabric feels silky rather than like a stem. Genuine bamboo fibre, mechanically crushed and spun, exists but is a small part of the trade.
Since seed cannot be relied on, bamboo is normally propagated from divisions, culm cuttings and, in the nursery trade, from tissue culture. Nodal bud culture and somatic embryogenesis are both used to multiply selected clones at scale, which is how named ornamental bamboos stay uniform. If you buy tissue-cultured plants, pot them on promptly; the juvenile shoots are soft and dry out fast.
The culm is a hollow tube with solid septa at the nodes, and its strength-to-weight ratio has kept bamboo in scaffolding, flooring, furniture, fencing, fishing rods, paper pulp and the chopstick and skewer trade. The young shoot is a vegetable, the seed is a grain, and the leaf is a fodder; few plants give so many products from one stand.
Uses & Benefits
Edible bamboo shoots are edible only after cooking. The shoot carries taxiphyllin, a cyanogenic glucoside that releases hydrogen cyanide when the tissue is crushed, and the traditional answer is a long boil with one or two changes of water, which dissolves and drives off the cyanogen. Peel the tough outer sheaths first, slice the shoot, and boil it until the raw bite is gone; shoots eaten raw or undercooked are a genuine hazard.
Growing from Seed
Bamboo grain has a short life and should be sown soon after it arrives. Sow the caryopsis barely covered, on the surface of a fine, moisture-retentive mix of loam, compost and sand, and keep it warm and humid under a cover. Light helps, so do not bury it. Once the seedlings are standing on their own, pot them on individually, taking care not to break the first slender rhizome.
For a running species, dig in a root barrier of heavy-duty plastic or concrete at least half a metre deep, leaving a lip above soil so the rhizome cannot ride over it. For a clumping species, no barrier is needed but the clump still needs space. Mulch heavily, water through dry spells in the first two seasons, and feed with a nitrogen-rich dressing in spring.
Waterlogged ground rots the rhizome and turns a clump yellow from the inside out, so drainage matters more than richness. In containers and crowded nurseries, bamboo mites and scale build on the backs of the leaves and cause pale stippling; increase air movement and knock them back with a soap spray before the stand is dense.
Our Take
I keep one clumping bamboo in a pot by the door and one running species behind a barrier, and I have never regretted the barrier. If you want a named species rather than a mixed lot, start with Bambusa multiplex for a hedging clumper or Bambusa tuldoides for a bigger one; Timor black bamboo is the handsome dark-culmed choice, and Miscanthus sinensis gives the same grass architecture without a rhizome to police.
Related Reading
Gardeners who grow Bamboo often pair it with these related subjects: