Despite relatively cold winter, B. fungosa came out only slightly damaged and fully recovered in early spring. Even bamboos with more damage started shooting before fungosa, so I actually started to be a bit worried about it’s spring shooting. If it would decide to skip it and only start shooting in the fall, all the new growth would likely be lost during the following winter. It had grown a lot of new branches and leafed out really soon after winter, so I expected it to shoot soon as well. That did not happen, it took it’s time.

When in the mid June first shoots started to appear, temperatures were already summer-like, and it usually refused to like that kind of weather, especially in it’s new location, that is much more exposed to full sun than it’s previous growing place. Shoots appeared small at first, but soon started to get thicker and thicker, showing some decent upsize from last year. I watered it regularly to prevent it from drying out during heat waves, we’ve seen this year, and surprisingly, bamboo actually liked the amount of sun. Before, when it was smaller and younger, it became chlorotic and pale after even short exposure to heat and sun.

Shoots grew through the dense clump. Shoots have soft growing tip, which is completely different than with most other bamboos. It can easily look like the tip is broken, but it’s just the soft culm sheath that can easily move through the obstacles and make space for the shoot to finally tower itself above old growth. When it began shooting, I expected it to stop after first batch of shoots, so they can mature and leaf out like bamboos usually do. Not Borinda fungosa – it shoots constantly through the early and mid summer, later with smaller (but not small) shoots. First wave of shoots is numerous, then they start appearing in lower numbers with more time between emerging new shoots.

When compared to phyllostachys, Borinda needs quite a bit more time for the shoots to mature. Hopefully, all the new culms will harden enough to withstand the next winter. Bamboo is getting more hardy to both, winter cold and summer heat. It used to suffer during both, summer and winter and only really thrived during spring and fall.