Brief Summary of How Bamboo Grows:

    The 'experts' agree on the following taxonomy of how bamboo is classified. These facts are from the American Bamboo Society's 2005 findings.

    More simply put bamboo is a giant grass and is a member of the Gramineae. The subfamily of this class is Bambusoideae. All the types of bamboo such as the cold hardy temperate species fall into a Genus next. An example of this would be the Phyllostachys that we grow many of here in Alabama and through out the U.S. Next comes the Species such as nigra. Then the Cultivar of this species such as the Henon. When a cultivar flowers it may or may not create a stable new variety. This happened fairly recently when ( what I consider a unstable cultivar) the cultivar Phyllostachys vivax 'Aureocaulis' started to produce the variety P. vivax 'Huangwenzhu' within the groves of 'Aureocaulis'.

    Bamboo differs from many plants in the manner that it has to be identified. The problem lies in the fact that it rarely flowers and this is the easiest way to identify plants. Flowering can vary from a few years up to one hundred and twenty years. Fortunately, the Chinese and Japanese have maintained good records on many species. The rest have been grouped and identified based wholly on vegetative structures.

     Bamboo goes years between flowering, this can be from 20 to over 120 years, so classification is often difficult. When a species of bamboo does flower, the grove may or may not establish itself again. The rhizomes (root system) may establish the grove or the flowering process may produce new seedlings.