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Culm color of variegated Luteosulcata seedling (1)

February 14, 2017 tarzan Comments 0 Comment

Phyllostachys arcana ‘Luteosulcata’ & yellow sulcus

The seedling has suffered a lot and is still in early stage of growth

There was a debate recently on bambooweb forum regarding seeds sold as ‘Yellow groove’ seeds. It’s known that Phyllostachys aureosulcata (and other bamboos from that gang) flower from time to time, without resulting viable seed. Since it’s also not in gregarious flowering, there’s no way someone could get viable seeds of Yellow groove bamboo. However, there is a bamboo with similar characteristics (including zigzag and yellow striped sulcus) that is flowering recently and has given a lot of seeds already – Phyllostachys arcana ‘Luteosulcata’. Despite the fact that there are many growers, trying to get a Bamboo seedling with yellow sulcus, no such plant had been found so far.

The seedling that does show a bit different culm color

3 months old culm with older culms in the background

My first variegated Phyllostachys arcana ‘Luteosulcata’ seedling has a very pale leaf variegation. It doesn’t only have pale leaves, culms are also lacking green pigmentation. In early stages of seedling’s growth, I could see that culm color was different than any other seedling I’ve grown, including other variegated seedlings. As soon as young shoots loose their sheaths, the culm inside looks almost completely white to very light green. Within days, light exposure makes the shoot turn more and more red. It can turn into unbelievable red color, unlike I’ve seen on any other bamboo. It later fades out into yellow. Seedling is still in a very young phase (it actually lost some weight due to chain of wrong decisions I’ve made :)) which means it can change considerably as it matures. It may end up looking much greener further down the road. We will see …

Culms of other Luteosulcata seedlings?

The seedlings I am growing have shown no culm stripings so far. They are young and will perhaps show some kind of culm variegation later, but there are slim chances. So far, there are no reports about a new generation seedling with culm variegation. My other seedlings do show some difference regarding strength of light induced color, though. All have dark green culms with red coloration that colors the sun exposed culms purple/brown. The second variegated seedling also has a bit less intense green culms, that do not turn red, instead, they look quite similar to majority of other seedlings – less intense purple green.

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Variegated Phyllostachys arcana ‘Luteosulcata’ seedlings – Winter 2016/2017

February 2, 2017 tarzan Comments 3 comments

First half of winter

In the late January, winter slowly starts fading, nights become shorter and days a bit warmer. We’re half way through winter! Since, I’m overwintering my variegated bamboo seedlings inside, they have no idea about our brutal winter outside. At this point, it seems, two of my Phyllostachys arcana ‘Luteosulcata’ seedlings will gain in size a lot. The first and previously the largest seedling remained alive and still refuses to grow. For now, at least, it’s the smallest of three variegated seedlings. It grew many shoots as soon as I brought them inside and all but a couple of them died off and rotted. It’s getting better, but it lags more and more against it’s younger siblings.

Seedling #1

The oldest seedling, which grew quite well during last winter is not doing exceptionally well this winter. In the beginning, it was infested with aphids and it soon started losing even the youngest leaves. I decided to spray all three bamboo seedlings with insecticide to eliminate any possible pest I had brought inside. I also trimmed the seedling considerably, removing all the highly damaged branches, leaves and a couple of dead culms. At that point, it started shooting heavily, but ended up losing most of the new growth.

Eventually it started to look much better. It actually ended up being the only of three seedlings without the strange fungal infection. I have left old culms that were still alive and they soon started branching out. The leaves were miniature, but they showed nice variegation. On a couple of leaves, I could observe another type of variegation. Some leaves were not progressively turning from lime green to yellow-green gradient kind of variegation, instead, the variegation was present from the very beginning, (completely green) dark green stripes on yellow leaf. Like last winter, I have had difficult time preventing leaf tips from drying out. I’m still investigating what actually causes that issue as it sometimes appear on other seedlings as well. I’m almost sure it’s water or nutrient related.

Seedling #2

The weakest seedling that somehow recovered after being neglected for almost a year started strong from the very beginning. It merely had one shoot when I brought it inside, but it managed to push out one pretty large shoot. That single but large shoot used the energy from the previous stem, it died off when the shoot leafed out. The second seedling has shown incredible ability to survive and it actually grows much faster than the first seedling. To fight off the fungal infection I mentioned earlier, I regularly sprayed it with Aspirin dissolved in water. It looks like it’s working, the infection of the leaves slowed down considerably. Aspirin triggered another thing – growing branches and shooting. I’ve grown many bamboo seeds by now and I never used Aspirin. I have also never seen a bamboo seedling that would start branching out that much, or in the case of the third seedling – shooting insanely.

Seedling #3

Third seedling is shooting insamely — Third seedling is shooting insanely

The least variegated seedling ‘exploded’ immediately after I brought it inside. It also got infected by the same fungal infection as the second seedling. Fungal disease did not slow it down as it remained vigorous and looked strangely healthy, if I count out the darkening leaves. It produces a lot of green matter, which makes it heavy feeder. It shows signs of nutrient deficiency soon after I stop giving it daily dose of water soluble liquid fertilizer. After treating with Aspirin, it went completely insane, pushing out more than 20 shoots at the same time. At the same time, older shoots branched out on nearly all of their internodes. I can’t tell for sure if it was the salicylic acid that did the magic, but it sure look so.

The infection doesn’t seem to be spreading now, and the seedling looks even healthier. The seedling showed three types (perhaps I could call them stages) of variegation. There are some completely unvariegated green leaves. There are loads of seemingly unvariegated leaves with a stripe on the edge of the leaf blade. Stripe sometimes have gaps of unvariegated leaf tissue which makes the stripes look a bit fuzzy. Some leaves have more pronounced stripes that appear in the middle of the leaf as well as on it’s edge. Lately, I am able to see leaves with same kind of progressive variegation as on the previous two seedlings. Strangely, it only appears on some of the shoots and they then have the same kind of variegation through the whole culm. Perhaps that could show chimeric nature of the seedling?

More than 20 shoots at the same time must be the new record

It’s much darker than other seedling’s variegation, it looks very similar and it also ‘grows’ progressively from more uniform lighter green color. Darker parts get darker while leaf matures and paler stripes get lighter green. These stripes are never (so far) yellow, compared to other seedlings, which makes the leaves look healthier.
I am not sure if these variegations will change with time, if one of them will become dominant or just fade out eventually.

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Bamboo fungal infection?

January 6, 2017 tarzan Comments 5 comments

Temperature outside dropped considerably, and I’m afraid that some of my less hardy bamboos will get completely toasted this year. In late fall, I have taken my variegated Phyllostachys arcana ‘Luteosulcata’ seedlings inside for overwintering. In just a week or so, I have noticed dark spots on some of their leaves. All the plants seemed to have been affected, but the issue seemes to be a bit different on the greener seedling. The darker, less variegated seedling started getting larger spots on it’s leaves. These spots appeared on old and on new leaves, young leaves seemed to be much more affected than the hardened ones. This seedling is overall happy and started shooting vigorously. New shoots are affected, but at this time, it seems like the infection is slowly fading out as new leaves take longer to develop the spots.

Upper sides of leaf surface are holding much better

Other two, more variegated seedlings, took the same time to develop tiny black spots all over the leaf. These are much less visible from upper side of the leaf and hit the bottom side first. New leaves appear healthy at first, but when they age to a month or two, they start getting dark brown. Bottom side of the leaf gets hit first with just a couple of brown spots, eventually, it spreads all the way to the leaf tip and through the leaf to the upper side of leaf. I have cut off all the leaves from the largest seedling at the very beginning, when I first saw the issue. It doesn’t show any issues for now, but it grows really slow. It shows signs of recovery. I thoroughly sprayed all the seedlings with insecticide and it didn’t do much good.

Bamboo grows vigorously despite the infection

When I took the seedlings inside, they all started growing rapidly. All of them started shooting and don’t really seem to be bothered by their infection. Especially the greener form started acting like the super-aggressive seedling from last winter. I keep temperature around 21°C – 25°C, relative humidity around 45% and around 16 hour light cycle. They have a fan nearby, which makes sure there is always some airflow. I will leave the seedlings inside for the winter and keep an eye on them. If they start to decline, I’ll bath them in fungicide, if not, I’ll wait for the spring to come and thoroughly spray them before planting them outside the next season.

Did any of you ever noticed anything similar on any of your bamboos? Hopefully I can identify the bamboo fungal infection, so I can get rid of it before the spring.