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Borinda fungosa – 2015 upsize

August 2, 2015 tarzan Comments 0 Comment

Young shoot managed to poke through the hard soil

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.

In early summer, it finally started shooting.

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 appeared small, but soon became thicker

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.

Thick culms still covered with distinctive hairy Borinda sheaths.

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.

Towering new shoots

Funky hairstyle of Borinda fungosa shoot

B. fungosa clump is not as dense as with some other clumping bamboos.

Lower node started growing ring of roots above the soil level.

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Moso and yellow leaves

January 17, 2015 tarzan Comments 1 comment

Recently, someone asked me for advice about his yellowing Moso seedlings. I remember banging my head into the wall, trying to realize what was wrong with my Moso seedlings, when I was desperately trying to grow them from seed. At that point I have had no idea about the cause of yellowing and I was doing way too much (all the wrong things :)) to save them. In the end, all the pampering, fertilization, foliar sprays, excessive watering, moving them around from shade to half shade, full sun and back again, didn’t help them. Most of the seedlings from that time died a terrible death, except for one, which is growing vigorously.

Sickly yellow leaves on waterlogged Moso

Most possible causes of leaf yellowing are:

waterlogged soil
too much sun
soil heats up too much during the day
~~nutrient deficiency~~

Moso is terrible when grown in containers. Even if it’s already well established in it’s pot, it can get dry quickly, but it will immediately suffer if watered too much so it starts becoming water logged, roots will start rotting, water consumption will become minimal, soil will remain wet and it will start to die. Rather keep it on a dry side, at least partly shaded and protected from strong winds.

Sun exposure can be tricky for Moso seedling as well as watering, but it’s a lot less problematic – seedling can suffer, but should not die because of it. When exposed to full strength sun, it often folds it’s leaves to preserve water. If you water it, you can kill it, if you spray it’s leaves only, it will unfold, but only for the time leaves remains wet. Usually that kind of exposure doesn’t damage the seedling, BUT it will start getting paler green and will look a bit chlorotic with some visual defects on the leaves, it can loose some branches, some of the shoots can get damaged as well. In complete shade, it will grow slowly but should remain dark green and healthy. Best thing to do is to find partly shaded position for it to thrive. When established enough, its tolerance can improve.

In late fall or early summer when temperatures are low enough to allow sunbathing, dark pots can get extremely hot. In overheated soil, roots and rhizomes get damaged, start rotting and seedling starts to decline. Pots have to be protected from sun exposure, so the soil temperature remains constant and low enough. The best option is to bury the pots.

Why I struck through nutrient deficiency? At least for me, it was never deficiency. It can be though!
Yellowing usually occur when there’s nitrogen deficiency. In case of N deficiency, new leaves remain dark green, but older foliage starts to turn yellow. Seedling transfers all the nutrients from old leaves into new ones. Iron deficiency makes the leaves turn yellow, but the veins remain green. It starts showing in new leaves first, in severe cases older leaves also get affected.
Sulfur deficiency hits the whole plant at the same time, which means new and old leaves turn yellow at the same time. Leaf veins get yellow as well.
Magnesium deficient plants start yellowing in the older leaves, then yellowing spreads to newer leaves if deficiency is severe.

… but usually it’s not deficiency at all.

To improve my seedling’s chances I now prepare my soil mix myself. I use garden soil, 2 years old compost (kitchen scraps, grass clippings, wood chips,…), peat moss, partly decomposed wood chips and some sand or gypsum. Soil holds water well enough, there are many air pockets inside and a it offers a lot of nutrients.

Most common mistakes:

using cheap pure peat moss ‘soil’
up-potting into large container
mindless watering and fertilization

The main cause of waterlogging is usually inappropriate soil mix. If there’s too much organic material in the soil, it can hold and lock-in a lot of water. Peat moss, and coconut fiber based soil mix can hold water like a sponge, which leads to yellowing and death of young Moso seedlings.

In a small pot, there will be a lot of roots that will make the soil more porous allowing excess water to drain out of the pot. If there are many roots and established plant above the soil level, water consumption will be high enough to use the water before it becomes an issue. When transplanting the seedling into large (too large) pot, soil can get too wet, preventing seedling’s roots to conquer newly acquired space.

Sometimes when soil is already saturated with water, leaves will start showing the same signs of stress as if the soil would be dry. Wilted leaves don’t necessarily mean that seedling needs more water, if soil looks moist, do not water. If leaves start to turn yellow and you suspect nutrient deficiency, only use mild concentration of fertilizer with the next watering. If issue doesn’t go away after a week or two, it most likely isn’t nutrient deficiency related.

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Freeze damage

December 13, 2014 tarzan Comments 2 comments

My plan was, to closely monitor weather data and try to spot emergence of cold induced damage on different (more or less) cold hardy bamboos. With gathered data, I’ll be able to determine cold hardiness of each individual bamboo, and detect possible ‘top kill’ conditions or (I sure hope not) conditions where bamboo completely dies. Bamboos are placed in different locations and can have their own micro-climate, but conditions are nearly identical. Small Chimonocalamus pallens seedling is planted under quite large Fargesia murielae, so it’s a bit more protected, but also much more tender because of it’s youth and extremely small size. Actually I will not be able to determine proper values for Chimonocalamus seedling, I will, however, be able to check its hardiness in it’s young seedling stage.

Chimonocalamus pallens - the first bamboo that had shown leaf damage. — Chimonocalamus pallens – the first bamboo that had shown leaf damage.

I will closely monitor temperatures and try to write down absolute low temperature (usually morning) and highest temperature. I will add wind conditions information, soil freeze / thaw conditions, information about snow cover accumulation, exposure to full sun, fog, rain, freezing rain… While closely checking weather conditions, I’ll also keep my eyes on all the plants, trying to notice any sign of stress or damage. When weather conditions won’t allow me to identify damage, for example in prolonged period of time with temperatures below freezing or rainy weather that will temporarily re-hydrate damaged leaves, making them look alive, I’ll try to determine the cause and extent of damage when it becomes evident.
I’ll keep all my recordings for further analysis and in try to create easily readable table or chart. Non-threatening days (with temperature above freezing) will be excluded, but will be mentioned as annotation in case of possible impact on plant’s condition later on when freeze damage occurs.

First freeze damage victims: Chimonocalamus pallens and Borinda fungosa seedlings

When temperature dropped and freeze the soil enough (-5°C/+2°C), Chimonocalamus pallens was the first of bamboos that started to show signs of leaf damage. Damage most likely started because of frozen soil and direct sun exposure. Leaves were exposed to full sun and roots were mostly shaded by F. murielae. With day temperature just above freezing, without wind and fully shaded, 1 cm of soil remained frozen. That was enough to damage the leaf cells. Leaves ended up slightly damaged and some of the youngest branches dried out during the first cold spell.
At the same time, the last shoots of Borinda fungosa also started showing some damage. The unbranched shoot is missing the top leaves, but culm still seems to be alive. Spring will tell if branches or buds got damaged. Autumn shoots that branched out recently had shown some damage and had lost a couple of fresh branches, but at least some of them might still be alive. Full extent of damage will also be visible in the spring.

DATA

Bamboo Name
Phyllostachys aureosulcata ‘Spectabilis’
Phyllostachys pubescens ‘Moso’ (3 year old seedling)
Phyllostachys aurea
Borinda (Fargesia) Fungosa (3 year old seedling)
Fargesia denudata ‘Lancaster 1’
Fargesia Murielae
Hibanobambusa tranquillans ‘Shiroshima’
Pseudosasa japonica ‘Tsutsumiana’
Chimonocalamus pallens (1 year old seedling)

Second cold wave.

Just after Christmas, we’ve received another wave of cold air that persisted longer and temperatures dipped much lower. Luckily we’ve received around 20 cm of snow in the beginning when temperatures started plunging. I used that snow cover to tarp down and bury Borinda fungosa which is not hardy enough to survive during harsh winter conditions. Most of the time it was sunny weather with moderate to strong wind. Moso leaves that were not protected by snow started to show signs of freeze damage when temperature dropped to -13°C. When temperature dropped to -15°C, first signs of damage appeared on Hibanobambusa tranquillans ‘Shiroshima’, exposed branches of Phyllostachys pubescens ‘Moso’ seedling got completely fried, Borinda was already tarped and covered with snow to prevent cold air from entering the space between tarp and the ground. Temperatures remained below freezing, but sun managed to melt the snow on south facing positions which caused quite some damage on bamboos that got exposed that way.

Phyllostachys pubescens ‘Moso’ got completely defoliated (perhaps even top-killed) on it’s southern side. Snow cover remained on it’s north facing side, which kept all the leaves and had shown only minor signs of any kind of damage. On January 3rd, snow started melting and temperatures started to rise. When daily highs were above freezing, there was no additional damage on any of bamboos. At the end of the cold wave, southern wind brought warm weather and I untarped B. fungosa to see it’s condition. It was looking surprisingly good. While exposed parts of culms got completely killed, everything that was tarped remained in relatively good condition. Old culms and shoots from late spring/early summer received only up to 30% leaf damage, shoots from early autumn, on the other hand, got up to 90% damaged despite protection.

Result of second cold wave

Half bald Phyllostachys pubescens. Exposed southern side got fried, while snow cover on the other side protected it from severe cold

Chimonocalamus pallens (1 year old seedling) got devastated. Despite being covered with snow and branches of F. murielae, it got completely fried, dried, broken and dead. I still hope rhizomes remained alive so it can ressurect in the spring.

Phyllostachys pubescens ‘Moso’ was also seriously hit. It was covered in snow, but sun managed to expose it’s southern side. Southern side is completely fried, northern side almost undamaged.

Borinda fungosa lost from 20% (mature shoots from spring and last year’s growth) to 90% (youngest shoots) of leaves. It was tarped and bent almost to the ground, which proved to be sufficient protection. All the older shoots survived, late summer/early fall shoots seem to be damaged, but damage can’t be determined before spring. Some of the nodes might still be alive. Tarped and snow covered leaves were only slightly damaged, some started to turn yellow like those in the fall, those that are dead started to dry, most of surviving leaves are green.

Hibanobambusa tranquillans ‘Shiroshima’ had shown quite a lot of damage, but it seems it’s holding well. Snow covered leaves were undamaged, exposed leaves are severely damaged but still show signs of life. Several older culms that were too rigid to get any snow protection seem to be dead.
Phyllostachys aurea is holding well, much better than in 2012 when it got top killed. It does show some frost damage, but most of the culms took the cold surprisingly well. Even some of exposed leaves managed to recover, despite being totally dried out and wilted during the cold sunny weather.

Pseudosasa japonica ‘Tsutsumiana’ got only slightly damaged. Some of the leaves were exposed to cold and were damaged, but they are still alive. It does have several tops fried. They are also water-logged most of the time and they never lost supply of water.

Fargesia denudata ‘Lancaster 1’ is showing some damage as well. It got attacked by voles once again, so it might be vole issue, not the cold alone. I really need to do something about voles.

Fargesia murielae is almost undamaged. It got flattened by the snow, with only middle of the clump partly exposed. When snow melted and some of the branches experienced the cold, it didn’t do much damage to them.

Phyllostachys aureosulcata ‘Spectabilis’ was also almost flattedned despite it’s larger size. I shook it a bit to keep the snow off, so it was exposed to the cold and the sun. It had shown minor signs of damage on youngest shoots during the worst cold, but it recovered. Late autumn shoots that were just starting to branch out in late fall, might be damaged, but are still standing.

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Bamboo and autumn leaf fall

November 19, 2014 tarzan Comments 2 comments

Despite the fact that bamboo (well, at least most of them) is evergreen plant, most of temperate bamboos start shedding leaves as soon as weather starts getting colder.

Before and after picture on Borinda fungosa. It had lost more than 1/3 of it's leaves within a week. Culms are more exposed and will most likely get their beautiful tan in the winter sun. — Before and after picture on Borinda fungosa. It had lost more than 1/3 of it’s leaves within a week. Culms are more exposed and will most likely get their beautiful tan in the winter sun.

During the winter, plant’s activity drops and water mobility inside the plant slows down and sometimes even stops completely. With temperatures below freezing, soil can be cold or even frozen on top, effectively preventing water to get from roots into leaves. Evergreen plants continue to loose water through the leaves by transpiration during the winter. Leaf can heat up considerably during bright sunny winter day and even if air temperature is low, rate of transpiration gets higher. Higher transpiration rate becomes a problem, when roots fail to replenish all the water that is lost through the leaves. Water loss problem gets worst during prolonged periods of strong winds and on already mentioned sunny days.

Deciduous plants shed their leaves during the unfavorable part of the growing season, which can be winter in temperate parts of the globe or dry season in the tropics. Plants effectively prevent water loss caused by unnecessary transpiration by tossing away their foliage. Bamboos usually remain green during the winter, except some of the species that grow at higher altitudes in the mountains. They do prepare for the winter and shed some of their leaves though.

Hibanobambusa had lost less leaves than other bamboos, but it didn't have many to start with either. — Hibanobambusa had lost less leaves than other bamboos, but it didn’t have many to start with either.

When first frost arrived, most of the bamboos in my garden triggered leaf yellowing process but in only about a week, when most of the colored leaves dropped, bamboos turned green again, yet with a lot less greenery on them. Some of bamboos like to dispose of unnecessary leaves regularly, even during the summer, which means they show much less leaf loss in the fall. That kind of pattern was seen on Fargesia rufa. It was also the first bamboo to drop some of it’s leaves.

Some leaves lost, and some still yellow. It also started shooting in late fall. In late fail.

Phyllostachys aureosulcata Spectabilis either forgot to drop leaves or it managed to do it regularly so it was hard to notice. I do remember seeing yellow leaves, but they were emerging sporadically and were easily missed. Ground below and around it show almost no sign of dead leaves.
Phyllostachys Aurea is loosing a lot of leaves each fall and this year it’s doing the same. It does take a bit more time to complete the task.
Phyllostachys heterocycla Pubescens – Moso is also showing only minor leaf fall. It does like to drop the leaves in the spring after it starts shooting. Yellowing usually occurs when last year’s branches start to grow new foliage.

When it comes to scraping leaves, Borinda fungosa holds the title.

And the winner is Borinda fungosa. It started yellowing after first frost, in only a couple of days it was full of yellow leaves and just a couple of days later, there were no signs of yellow leaves on it. Soil around it, on the other hand is full of leaves that will hopefully protect the plant from winter cold.

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