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Variegated Phyllostachys arcana Seedlings – Fall 2017 Update

October 10, 2017 tarzan Comments 4 comments

As the weather cooled down in late summer, all my bamboos started growing faster above and below the soil level. Even the highly variegated seedlings started running with extreme vigor, this fall. The fact, that that they are variegated and have somewhat lower photosynthetic ability didn’t seem to bother them. Most of my Phyllostachys arcana ‘Luteosulcata’ seedlings had shown extreme vigor and tendency to grow many runners that often appear above ground only to dive into the soil again. All the variegated seedlings are showing the same kind of growth, as I’ve already mentioned in previous post.

Leaves started to recover

When the summer heat and drought passed, we’ve been hit by colder than average weather and close to record breaking amounts of rain. We’ve only have a couple of sunny days and most of the time it was raining. All the water managed to wake up the bamboos that were mostly sleeping and quietly storing energy during the summer. Like I mentioned earlier, the leaves were badly burnt in the summer due to high amount of direct sun, heat and lack of precipitation. Days have shortened and the sun lost its scorching strength in late summer. The change made bamboos look completely refreshed and renewed, compared to rather sad burnt seedlings during the summer.

The second variegated seedling getting greener — The second variegated seedling is now the largest

Gradual change of color

I have expected the leaf color to change when the leaves receive different amounts of light and it seems they did turn a bit darker green as soon as sun exposure declined. It could as well be a coincidence related to the growth pattern they are showing – gradual change from almost completely yellow leaves on the bottom of the new shoot, all the way towards the almost solid green leaves on top. Same growth pattern occurs on branches as well. One of the seedlings has wider range of leaf colors, because it gets darker green than the other which remains intensively variegated.

The first seedling remains the most variegated seedling I had ever grown

Thickening of leaves

When the weather started cooling down, leaves started changing rapidly. Light and thin leaves thickened and got almost glossy surface. With warm daily high temperatures, all bamboos grew fast, even when temperatures during the night fell below 5°C. It should be interesting to see, how much cold the ‘waxed ‘leaves can hold during the winter. The leaves also started getting a bit darker color on the variegated part of the leaf. Transformation is similar to Hibanobambusa tranquillans ‘Shiroshima’, which turns from cream white to yellow color.

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Rhizomes of young Phyllostachys arcana seedlings

September 2, 2017 tarzan Comments 0 Comment

As I mentioned in one of my previous posts, Phyllostachys arcana seedlings finally started growing rhizomes this summer. Due to hot and dry weather, many of my bamboos suffered from mild drought, but overall, they liked this summer.

The vigorous seedling

Extremely active and aggressive seedling which started running before it was 6 months old didn’t grow much this spring. During the early summer, it only received a couple of new shoots. It’s planted in a bucket, which made it suffer during the dry weather. Occasionally, when I was not around, it got completely dry. When I watered it, it bounced back, but it lost most of the growing tips. It was somewhat pale during most of the summer, so I didn’t expect much. When weather cooled down, I noticed a hole in the pot. Rhizome broke the thick plastic. At that point it was the first time I saw that the whole pot already got deformed, and it was clearly visible that there’s a lot of rhizome activity inside – bucket was bursting!

Variegated seedlings

Yellow rhizome from one of the beautifully variegated seedling

Green rhizome on the second highly variegated seedling form

Some of the runners are getting quite long!

Until recently, highly variegated seedlings of Phyllostachys arcana ‘Luteosulcata’ were not nearly as aggressive as other, non-variegated seedlings. It seems that most seedlings I started from the Luteosulcata seeds, run with extreme force. I placed the variegated seedlings into raised bed and they loved it. With early autumn, rhizomes also arrived. It is evident, that all the seedlings have rhizomes which love to travel above ground before plunging back into the soil. That makes them really easy to find. Two bright variegated seedlings have very similar leaves and variegation, but they don’t share the rhizome color. The slightly older seedling’s rhizomes are yellow, with only just a notch of green. The other one has dark green rhizomes, similar to the color of regular green seedlings. The same applies to shoot color as well. None of them shows any kind of specific sulcus coloration.

Seedlings that survived the winter outside

I left a couple of weak bamboo seedlings outside, planted in my raised bed. I did not have the will and energy too get them inside and prepare them for the winter. As these were the weakest seedlings, growing in deep shade of my chili plants, I decided I could try their winter hardiness that way. If they would have perished, I would know I need to take care about the remaining plants with more effort. They not only survived the winter untouched, they started running at least as aggressively as my most aggressive seedling at comparable size. Rhizomes are much thicker than those from the overwintered bamboos and they seem to travel even further away. Based on their happiness and vigor, I decided to keep all my variegated seedlings outside this winter as well. Hopefully they will be equally hardy and the winter will not be too hard on them.

The remaining neglected seedlings

Bamboo seedlings don't like to grow in small pots — Bamboo seedlings don’t like to grow in small pots

I have a dozen or so more seedlings that are inside smaller containers. They were neglected and stayed alive, but remained small – the size of 2 month old seedlings. Their resilience is kind of striking, they were almost completely dried out, frozen, growing in deep shade, bright light and in the end, grass had overgrown their pots. I was thinking about planting them somewhere for a while to help them get going, but I’m really tight on available space. I’ll need to do something about that, but in the meantime, I’ll just try keeping them alive. They don’t die easily though, they are the opposite of Phyllostachys pubescens – Moso bamboo seedlings. Those often die off from no apparent reason just if you look at them the wrong way.

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Variegated Bamboo Seedlings – Summer 2017 Update

August 21, 2017 tarzan Comments 0 Comment

Keeping my 3 variegated Phyllostachys arcana ‘Luteosulcata’ seedlings inside during last winter, caused seedlings to decline. The older seedling that was once larger, hardly managed to survive the winter. At first, they seemed healthy, but they all got some kind of mold infection soon, which didn’t have any visible effect on their vigor, yet they started to decline as they stayed inside for too long. When I planted them outside, their leaves recovered and mold issues stopped, but they refused to start shooting.

A few words about the weather

Somewhat orange culm is fading to yellow

This year we’ve had a cold spring with severe late freezes. Cold did not harm the variegated seedlings, but the infected moldy leaves fell down. I suspect the much brighter sun fried them completely. New leaves were healthy until later in the summer. Summer brought very warm weather without much precipitation. Temperatures rose up above 38°C a few times and stayed above 30°C almost the whole summer. I planted the seedlings into raised bed, which made them suffer drought a bit more, despite frequent watering.

Heat stress resilience

During first half of the summer, all the seedlings managed to cope direct sun exposure extremely well. I expected the two highly variegated seedlings to have issues with bright light conditions, because I’ve seen last year how their leaves tend to bleach due to sun exposure. Until mid June, there was no damage on any of their leaves. They looked fascinating, despite the fact that they never started shooting and all the leaves and branches were the result of growth that was initiated inside. As summer progressed and sun reached the highest point in the sky, leaves of both bright variegated bamboo seedlings started getting bleached. The strength of the sun was just too much for them to handle. At the same time, we’ve had temperatures above 35°C, which only added some additional stress to the plants. The leaves of all the seedlings curled during the heat and watering didn’t help much. They were not able to supply enough water to replenish the water lost due to transpiration. Over all, heat and sun related resilience was good. I am impressed.

Drought stress

In mid summer when the heat was hardly bearable, drought kicked in. Constant wind and very high temperatures started to show first signs of damage on the leaves. Daily watering was not enough to keep the soil wet, but even when the soil dried out, bamboo seedlings got enough water from deeper roots. When the seedlings mature, I expect them to fare drought even more. In the end of the summer, leaf tips stopped drying. At the same time I noticed they were not sitting idle during the summer. They were producing, a lot!

The dark green variegated seedling

The dark green seedling lost it's variegation and stopped growing completely — The dark green seedling lost it’s variegation and stopped growing completely

The darker green variegated seedling that was the largest and nicely variegated while I kept it inside, had lost the variegation almost completely. It looks like bright light position makes it greener and shady indoors conditions under grow light caused it to become variegated. I may try moving it into a shaded position or I’ll just divide it and plant it into different locations. It is the only seedling that did not start shooting until late August. There’s one more thing I need to mention about this Phyllostachys arcana seedling – it did not grow any taller. Now it looks like some kind of ground cover bamboo with many tiny culms that only reach 20 cm or so. It all happened when I watered it with an Aspirin solution as I experimented with salicylic acid to combat mold infection. Possible cause could also be the lack of dormancy. I’m quite certain it will start growing next year.

Running!

Both bright variegated seedlings like to grow dolphins

As the summer fell into second half in early August, I have noticed that two highly variegated seedlings started running. Runners started crawling in all directions, often getting to the surface and plunging back into soil again. The seedlings are still small and the rhizomes are also tiny, but the fact that they started spreading with such vigor is very promising. It will be interesting to see them start shooting the next spring when they hopefully start upsizing exponentially.

Winter is coming… eventually

When the warm part of the year ends, I plan to keep them outside in my raised beds. I will cover them with PVC tunnel and hopefully they will like it as much as a couple of tiny all-green seedlings last year did. They are now spreading vigorously, producing quite thick runners. I’ll somehow get rid of those in the spring, to make room for the variegated seedlings. I expect them all to recover even further after they get through their first dormancy.

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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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