Early starters

Like each year since I’m growing the seedlings in their outdoor location, they started shooting before other bamboos. Fargesia Rufa started a week later and Phyllostachys pubescens ‘Moso’ seedling woke up 2 weeks after the seedlings.
Winter was mild and bamboos managed to get through it without much damage. Sun during the summer is much bigger threat to the variegated seedlings than winter weather. This year, we’ve experienced dry winter with little precipitation which made most of the bamboos I grow thirsty. Arcana seedlings were hit the most, since they are still growing in their raised beds with good drainage. Despite slight desiccation, seedlings kept the leaves without much visible damage. In early March first shoots started appearing on all but one seedling. By mid March the shoots started showing around all the seedlings. March 13th was their earliest shooting date so far.

Nice upsize

Variegated seedlings showed stem variegation last year and I really hoped for a decent upsize, to make the variegation easier to notice. It seemed at first, that culm diameter won’t increase much, except on one seedling that started the first. They are growing many shoots that are around last year’s size and larger. Some should be almost twice the size. I’m sure they will look much better now. Variegated foliage is getting dense and it will finally shade out itself a bit. It needs protection from hot early summer sun, so I’ll try to help it with some additional shading as well.

Colorful shoots

The shoots are still juvenile and need quite some time to start showing more mature characteristics. They all look arcana-ish, though. They also vary in colour a bit. The yellow culmed seedling has more reddish shoots, compared to all the darker ones. The two other variegated seedlings have darker shoots, but not nearly as dark as the shoots of green non-variegated plant which gets almost black. As the plants grow, the shoots started to turn a bit darker. Last year, the yellow culmed seedling pushed out only yellow shoots with a hint of red, now there’s some green on them as well.

The waiting game

Variegated seedlings are slower to develop and it takes longer for them to mature. Last season, I could only check one of the seedlings for culm variegation, other two were too small to make a valid observation of green striping. This year, shoots on all the seedlings are thick enough and it will be interesting to finally see how they look like. It might be interesting to see if I can save the early set of yellow leaves. Last year sun scorched them before I could make a decent photo, but the bamboos looked fabulous. Sadly not for long.