Wild Running Bamboo Trees

How It Grows

• Bamboo grows from rhizomes that spread below the surface and send up woody stems, or culms. The culms shoot up and produce green leaves. Plants can grow to tree height in one season. Clumping bamboo grows more slowly and stays in a clump, hence its name. It is ideal to plant in an area where you want control. Running bamboo is hard to control. The rhizomes spread everywhere -- up to 100 feet from the mother plant -- and are difficult to root out. Running bamboo should be cultivated in containers or within careful barriers but even then it may escape and proliferate.

Going Wild

• Escaped ornamental bamboo can take over woodlands, stream banks, landscapes both urban and rural, and your yard. Golden bamboo is one of the worst offenders, according to Clemson University Extension, and can threaten biodiversity, unbalance ecosystems and crowd out native species because the bamboo has no native controls. Many running bamboos are resistant to herbicides, making them even tougher to eradicate in the natural landscape. In addition, introducing herbicides to an environment creates problems of toxicity for local flora and fauna.

Temperate Zone Running Bamboo

• Some tree-like running bamboo plants will reach 20 to 35 feet in temperate growing zones. Several of the most common varieties are found in North America. Yellow-groove bamboo (Phyllostachys aureosulcata) has several cultivars. All of them can reach 25 feet. The culms may be green with a pronounced yellow groove running down one side, solid yellow, yellow with a single green stripe or ribbed with very narrow green and yellow stripes. Phyllostachys vivax will grow as high as 35 feet and produces a solid green culm or a yellow with green striped culm. Phyllostachys bissetti and Phyllostachys nuda both reach 25 feet when full-grown and are dark green. And black bamboo (Phyllostachys nigra) grows to 20 feet but its distinctive culms turn glossy black as it ages. All the temperate cultivars can form a beautiful grove but they are difficult to eradicate where they are not wanted.

Protecting Your Property

• If your property is adjacent to a wild bamboo forest or a neighbor with a rustling grove that is infringing on your rose arbor, you have your work cut out for you. Dumping herbicides on running bamboo is an ineffective way to stop its rampant spread. Try a multi-part process recommended by the American Bamboo Society to get rid of unwanted bamboo. Sever the shallow rhizomes with a sharp shovel forced into the ground. Cut down every single plant you find in your yard. Install a root barrier -- two to three feet deep and made of metal or tough plastic -- between your property and the offending bamboo plants. When rhizomes hit the barrier and climb up, cut them off. When old rhizomes send up new shoots, cut them down. Eventually, the old rhizomes will die off and the new ones will be stopped by your barrier.