Dying black bamboo
 

Dear all,

I hope you can help. I've only been doing gardening for nearly a year now and planted two bamboo clumps last summer.

I put them in the ground at the back of the garden and they were doing fine but over the winter one of them became quite bad. Leaves went brown and fell off and stalks going brown, from black. The one on the left seems to be on it's way out too.

I watered well when first planted, used compost and bone meal to bed them in. Over winter I didn't water them, could this be the problem? There is a covering of bark over the ground to help with keeping the moisture in.

After spending over £100 for these, I'm hoping I've not lost them. Any ideas on saving them.

Thanks very much.
Ramesh

If you were sold those as Black Bamboo (Phyllostachys nigra), I think you were conned. I'm pretty sure they are Fargesia nitida, which doesn't have a common name. I think you will agree that the stems of what you bought were actually a dull dark grey rather than the shiny black of real Black Bamboo. Also young culms on Black bamboo are green not black: they turn black in the second year, and I don't think you have any green culms. The acid test is whether the culm sections have a groove in them - real black bamboo has a vertical groove ("sulcus") in each culm section on alternating sides of the culm, and F nitida doesn't.

Disreputable sellers sometimes sell F nitida as black bamboo, because it is black(ish) and a lot cheaper. Though F nitida is a very nice plant in its own right. The plants you have are dying because they have flowered. Anyone with any specialist knowledge of bamboo knows that Fargesia nitida is in flowering mode, and it is necessary to sell seed-raised post-flowering stock to avoid it dying from flowering.

Take them back to the seller and demand your money back. If that is not an option, then they do sometimes revive, though as a much smaller plant, that will probably take about 5 years to get back to the size of the plant you bought. Or maybe really what happens is the seeds fall off and a few germinate and give the impression of the plant reviving, having a similar timescale. Water them as necessary, but don't feed them heavily until they are growing well.

If, however, I have misinterpreted the picture and you do have black bamboo, then come back to us and we'll try to work out what killed it. You shouldn't need to water them over the winter if they are planted in the ground.

I'm not sure why you are doubting the authenticity of them as they were purchased from a very reputable and highly respected supplied. They also have the groove along the stems that you say are proof of an authentic variety.

If they are flowering then why is the one of the left still green? Not as bushy as it was when I first bought it but it still looks alive to me.

I didn't know you bought them from a reputable supplier.

OK, I guessed wrong. What I said has been the answer to every one else's "why is my black bamboo dead" question, but as you can see I wasn't totally sure from the distance shots.

Black bamboo does tend to defoliate in the winter in the British climate, and it is very late into growth in the spring, could even be end of June before it does anything. So maybe you just wait a few more months to see if they are OK really. It's been really dry where I live the last 6 weeks or so. If it is like that where you are, and stays like that, water them regularly and abundantly, as they are fairly new into the ground.

They look like the real P. nigra to me and I think they will both send up some smallish new shoots next month, and then there should be no looking back unless we have a serious summer drought and you take a long holiday...