Running Bamboo

The ONLY time "running" bamboo presents an issue is because of a lack of proper maintenance. It is like rebellious teenagers, they may run away if they are not cared for and understood.

Bamboo, like all other life forms, expends energy in an efficient manner. If the bamboo is content in the grove it will expend energy to send up baby shoots through the ground. If it is not content it will send rhizomes to find a new place to establish.

The process of regeneration and is rhizome growth. Running bamboo sends rhizomes to seek new territory in one year. The next season the rhizome "shoots" to send culms up above ground to gather sunlight for photosynthesis. To feed the voracious rhizome.

An actual image of a cleaned rhizome showing nodes that produce large yellowish buds to form culms and new rhizomes, and the red root buds.

Clumping Bamboo

 

Clumping bamboo has rhizomes just like running bamboo and can be just as aggressive and invasive when it is overcrowded, confined, or othewise not happy where it is. About 30% of our removal requests are for overgrown clumping bamboo. We might add that 90% of our total business is removing bamboo from gardens with bamboo planted by "professionals" using a "barrier".

A depiction of a clumping rhizome.