Phyllostachys edulis daily growth report from 2020
Measuring growth
I was always impressed by how fast and how tall bamboo can grow. Sometimes you can almost see it grow and if you check it twice in the same day, the difference can be quite evident. To get a better picture about the growth speed of my Moso seedling, I decided to monitor its growth. I’ll write down the measurments and any other gathered information in this post.
| Measured height | 24h difference | Date |
|---|---|---|
| 24.50 cm | 0 cm | April 27. 2020 |
| 32.00 cm | +7.50 cm | April 28. 2020 |
| 40.00 cm | +8 cm | April 29. 2020 |
| 49.00 cm | +9 cm | April 30. 2020 |
| 61.00 cm | +12 cm | May 1. 2020 |
| 75.00 cm | +14 cm | May 2. 2020 |
| 89.00 cm | +14 cm | May 3. 2020 |
| 103.00 cm | +14 cm | May 4. 2020 |
| 122.50 cm | +19.50 cm | May 5. 2020 |
| 137.00 cm | +14.50 cm | May 6. 2020 |
| 154.00 cm | +17 cm | May 7. 2020 |
| 179.00 cm | +25 cm | May 8. 2020 |
| 212.00 cm | +33 cm | May 9. 2020 |
| 240.00 cm | +28 cm | May 10. 2020 |
| 267.00 cm | +27 cm | May 11. 2020 |
| 288.00 cm | +21 cm | May 12. 2020 |
| 293.00 cm | +5 cm | May 13. 2020 |
| 323.50 cm | +30.50 cm | May 14. 2020 |
| 365.00 cm | +41.50 cm | May 15. 2020 |
| 389.00 cm | +24 cm | May 16. 2020 |
| 413.00 cm | +24 cm | May 17. 2020 |
| 429.00 cm | 16.00 cm | May 18. 2020 |
| 459.00 cm | 30.00 cm | May 19. 2020 |
| 479.00 cm | 20.00 cm | May 20. 2020 |
…it grows – fast!
It was quite easy to check the length of the shoot at first but as soon as it overgrew me, things got complicated. I could have used a ladder and make a couple more measurements, but I knew soon it wouldn’t be enough, so I started using a taller bamboo pole to measure growing shoot. That solution worked sufficiently, but at one point, right before branching, bamboo started bending which made it nearly impossible to check its height. That was when I stopped measuring.
Adding weather into equation
When I got all the measurement results, I decided to check the meteorological data, calculate mean daily temperature (which includes both, day and night temperatures) and precipitation. The main idea was if I can find any correlation between weather and growth speed.
Mean daily temperature ranged from around 10°C to a bit above 18°C. The lowest temperature was detected on May 12th. On that day, and the morning of May 13th, temperature dropped to around 5°C. Strong cold front brought a decent amount of rain as well, which might have cooled down the soil a bit and considerably slowed down the growth, which almost stopped the following day (May 13. 2020 ).
Conclusion
At first relatively small shoot start to accelerate its growth progressively, when a bunch of internodes start to elongate simultaneously. In optimal conditions, graph would likely have a nice curve with its peak right before branching out and then rapid decline in growth speed. In time of drought, beneficial factor would likely be precipitation, in this case, it was the temperature that regulated the speed of bamboo culm elongation. If we consider that height measure gives us information about growth during previous day, It becomes clear that one day lag after a drastic cooldown or warm-up is logical. Exactly that happened on May 12th. I will get some more information this year to confirm the temperature / growth speed correlation.