Bamboo with big leaves for Central Florida?

[Merlyn]

16 hours ago, Scott W said:

Yeah I wouldn't say it's a machine, but two of the three stands struggled the first year in the ground as well.  The third is growing nicely and what you see in the first picture is about 6 years growth from a single culm division.

This one is also shade grown under an oak, get morning and maybe some late, late afternoon sun.  Gets watered when it rains or if we are in a drought maybe once a week.  Fertilized at the beginning of each year as well.

That clump looks great, if mine grew the same number of culms in 6 years I'd be happy.  My problem with Maligensis was seeing 30-35 culms pop up in April, with about 26 months in the ground.  It was also in full sun after about 9AM, is getting about 1 gallon per day in the center of the clump from a 2gph dripper, and gets fertilized 4x per year.  I'd imagine the shade, rainfall watering, and single dose of fertilizer probably slows it down somewhat.  As they say about bamboo, input = output.  I don't know enough about bamboo to guess if that's significant (like 1/2 the growth rate) or a minor difference (like 3/4 the growth rate).  I've seen some scraggly looking bamboo (Gracilis/Textilis types) around here that probably haven't gotten fertilizer in years, and they looked really sparse-leaved and unhappy.  So I wanted to avoid that with mine.  Maybe if I want to keep mine from getting too big I just need to cut back on the "inputs."

@D Palm Tropical Bamboo has Barbellata in stock, $45 plus probably $15 in shipping.  I've had great results from their boos, I think I've bought about 15 from them mail-order.    https://www.tropicalbamboo.com/tropical_list.asp?page=2

[Merlyn]

@Scott W how is your triple hybrid doing?  I am thinking of replacing my big Latiflorus in the SE corner.  It has grown to about 40ft with 5ish inch diameter culms.  But it keeps getting defoliated by either hurricanes or frost, or both.  I am weighing a few options like Emeiensis, Dolichomerithalla, and maybe the triple hybrid or similar.  Any size estimates or photos?

[Scott W]

On 1/28/2025 at 10:03 PM, Merlyn said:

@Scott W how is your triple hybrid doing?  Any size estimates or photos?

I planted it under two large oak trees as I wasn't sure what the true minimum temperature this would take, so figured it'd have some frost protection.

Anyways, love the coloring still, and last year's culms are about 2 1/4".  I ant on cutting two of the older culms out and trying my hand at propagating it.

[Merlyn]

@Scott W looks great!  I did end up cutting down the D. Latiflorus yesterday, it had grown to between 40-50ft and 4-5" culms.  It was about 90% leafless with roughly half of the top of each culm broken from Hurricane Milton, despite only seeing gusts a bit under 100mph.  I decided it just wasn't worth having a leafless boo that might end up almost twice as big as it is right now...

D. Maroochy is on the right, just a little bit smaller in diameter and height.  On the left is B. Cerossissima and in the foreground right is a recently transplanted Tiger Grass aka Thysanolaena Maxima.  I'm probably cutting out Maroochy tomorrow.  Here's the clump, showing somewhat open clumping but a bit larger spread than some.  Maroochy is much tighter clumping.

[Merlyn]

And tonight I cut down the Dendrocalamus Maroochy, which topped out at 45 feet and 3 inch culms.  The leaves were generally about 3" wide and 20" long, so pretty big!  It's much tighter clump:

And the culms just barely fell into my "drop zone," which worked out really well: