"Mark. Gooley" wrote in message
...

"tropo" wrote :
"Mark. Gooley" wrote

I understand that it's [B. balcooa] a widespread pest in parts of
Australia, so perhaps people are reluctant to offer it.

I'm in Australia and I haven't heard it referred to as a pest before.
It
is, or was the most common large, clumping bamboo on the east coast
before
the new era of bamboo plantations. It is a very good durable bamboo
although like many Bambusas, it has a lot of long branches that can get
interlocked making it a little untidy and difficult to manage. I prefer
Gigantochloa & Dendrocalamus species.

I can't seem to find a site calling it a pest, just some mention of how
there
are some out-of-control stands on the east coast of Australia, and how,
yeah, it's not the easiest to harvest because of the tangled branches.
Wonder where I got the idea?

What I'd really like to grow is D. asper, but although that's supposed to
be able to withstand about 23 degrees F (-5 C) without damage to the
culms, I have not been able to get it to survive a winter here (usual
harsh winter: brief lows around 18 F; this rather mild winter we're in
now, lows so far around 25 F). I can get D. asper plants grown from
cuttings; maybe I need to give them winter protection until they get
fairly large. I was hoping that B. balcooa would have enough extra
cold-hardiness to survive here reliably.

(I'm in north Florida, and D. asper seems to do okay in the southernmost
parts of Florida, as in the Miami area [and surely the Keys, if anyone has
tried it there]. Maybe it's just plain too cold here for the tropical
clumpers,
and I'm stuck with B. oldhamii or the like.)

Mark.



I think balcooa has about the same cold hardiness as D. asper, at least the
Javanese clone, I don't know about the Thai seedling clones. I once lived
in a river valley in NSW where we regularly had minimum temps of -7 degrees
C (about 19F) A balcooa I planted was killed to ground level every year for
a 3 or 4 years. Each year recovering bigger and stronger because of the
build-up of surviving rhizome mass. Then one winter was mild and the culms
survived and the clump never looked back. To look at the massive clump now,
15 years later, you couldn't tell it ever had a hard time. Asper should do
the same but whatever protection you can give it over winter will only help.
Especially that first one if it's only a small plant.

http://www.earthcare.com.au/slides/balcooa.htm
http://www.earthcare.com.au/slides/asper.htm

Hans