Instead, cuttings are typically taken from the younger culms. With tropical and clumping bamboo, rhizome divisions are not as easy. Only very rarely, at the end of its prolonged life cycle, will a bamboo plant resort to casting seeds in order to self replicate. More than nine times out of ten, this is how bamboo reproduces in nature. If the cutting doesn’t survive, you can be sure that the mother plant will, and that it will continue to proliferate more rhizomes. Rhizome cutting or rhizome division is neither difficult nor risky. With running bamboo, which has those long, sprawling, and sometimes insidious rhizome roots, it’s very easy to take a cutting from the rootstock and replant it into some moist, well-drained potting soil. (To learn more, check out our popular article on 3 Ways to Propagate Bamboo.) Looking at the legality and unreliability of importing bamboo seeds, there’s ample reason to seek a better alternative for propagating these marvelous grasses. Or in the case of bamboo, the fear is that it could be invasive. This law doesn’t single out bamboo but applies to any foreign plant species which could potentially threaten domestic habitats by carrying pests or disease. The Plant Quarantine Act of 1912 and USDA regulations associated with that act prohibit the importation of viable bamboo plants or seeds except through a USDA quarantine greenhouse. Then there’s another problem with importing bamboo seeds. And even the most transparent suppliers will acknowledge that they cannot guarantee the accuracy of their seed species. But there’s no way to guarantee quality or results. You can find sources online, even from places like Amazon. Unless you have a reputable supplier, someone you know personally, ordering bamboo seeds is a risky business. You can go on Amazon and see for yourself.īut buyer beware! I’ve seen bamboo enthusiasts post pictures of their newly sprouted “bamboo seeds” which turn out not to be bamboo at all. Given the scarcity of bamboo seeds and the difficulty of collecting them, suppliers can charge a steep price. ![]() Realistically, you can’t even tell if it’s bamboo. What’s worse, it’s impossible to look at a seed and know what species of bamboo it is. Things get moved, and labels fade or decompose. Over the decades and between the generations, it’s easy to lose track. If you’re collecting seeds from a plant that flowers once every 50 or 100 years, then you need a pretty good system for storing and organizing them. ![]() (See below.) Knowing one bamboo seed from another But it’s vital to have other means for propagating these bamboo varieties. Luckily, the entire plant won’t die when this species flowers, only the individual culms that are in bloom. In certain species, like Bambusa balcooa, the plants do not produce fertile, viable seeds. ![]() But then they must be properly dried, stored and identified. The good news is that a well-established grove of bamboo can produce a prodigious quantity of seed. Therefore, it’s very important to gather those seeds. So if it flowers gregariously, that means all the plants will die at once. In many cases, all members of given species will bloom at the same time, in what’s called synchronous or gregarious flowering.Īnd in most cases, the bamboo dies after it flowers, the way annual plants and flowers do. Certain members of the genus Phyllostachys, like Moso and Madake bamboo, actually take more than a century to flower. But unlike most plants, which flower on an annual basis, bamboo’s biological clock ticks at a much different pace.ĭepending on the species, some bamboo can take a few decades to flower. Bamboo, like any flowering plant, produces seeds after it flowers. But if you back up, you have to think about where the seed comes from. Most of us probably consider the germinating seed to be the first stage in the life cycle of a plant. And while some growers maintain that seeds produce the most vigorous plants, many insist on clones and tissue culture for dependability and consistency. It’s impossible to recognize a bamboo species by its seed, so accuracy is another thorny issue. Then there’s the challenge of storing and keeping track of the seeds for the next century. ![]() Some species of bamboo can take as long as 120 years to flower and go to seed. The problem with bamboo seeds begins at the flowering stage. Similarly, gardeners will be frustrated when they go looking for bamboo seeds, as they are scarce and problematic for a number of reasons. Many plants and trees, from apples to cannabis, rely almost entirely on clones and cuttings. The fact is, when it comes to commercial agriculture, clones and micro tissue cultures are nearly as popular as seeds. Or so the fairy tales would have you believe. When you want to grow a plant, you start by germinating a seed.
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