How to Grow and Care for Bamboo

Golden bamboo (Phyllostachys aurea) is a plant species often used as a screening bush or privacy hedge. Golden bamboo grows quickly, and its canes turn yellow in full or partial sun. They deepen into a gold-orange color as the plant matures.

Black bamboo (Phyllostachys nigra) is a type of bamboo plant native to the Chinese island of Hainan. In modern times it is cultivated in many places around the world. Black bamboo is used as a food, timber, and in the construction of musical instruments. The wood does not start out black, but gains the color after two to three years of growth.

The moso bamboo is an ornamental grass remarkable for its thick, evergreen, upright canes with green leaves. The canes are covered with fine, velvety hair, and it’s considered the world’s largest hardy bamboo. It’s cultivated for its edible shoots and paper pulp.

Phyllostachys reticulata is a perennial woody plant. Like all Phyllostachys species it grows with an underground rhizome which is relatively thin in comparison with the stalks from which the aboveground new shoots (leptomorphic rhizome) appear from the end of spring and does not grow like a hornet but spread out like a lawn over a large area.

This bamboo grows to an expected height of 9 m with a culm diameter of 4 cm. In areas where the average winter minimum temperature is above -15 ℃, it may grow to a maximum height of 14 m with a diameter of 7 cm. The typical form of this species has dark green culms with a yellow groove.