PlantFiles: Buddha's Belly Bamboo
Bambusa tuldoides 'Ventricosa'

I've seen a couple 15+ year old specimens, and they turn into densely packed walls of bamboo10 to 15 feet in diameter. It has billions of lower branches. I suppose the one interesting thing about this bamboo is that it creaks in the wind like an old ship at sea, because the culms rub up against each other. Only plant this if you need an impenetrable wall of bamboo about 50 feet high. It seems to stand up to hurricane force wind pretty well.

Having seen plenty of these in southern California planted in gardens of unsuspecting owners, expecting some Buddha bellies to show up and all being rather disappointed, not to mention shocked, to discover this is a relatively humongous plant, and pretty fast growing and invasive for a clumper (saw a clump in Ventura that had pretty much taken over the front yard about 20' in diameter), and growing over 40' tall, shading out pretty much everything (culms get long and arching) and dropping many pounds of leaves all over. If it were at least attractive or grew in orderly culms like many
Bambusa sp do, that would be one thing, but chaos seems to be the predominent growth pattern of this species. Only plant it if you have tons of room and don't want to see the sky nearby. I have had this bamboo growing in my yard, but after seeing it in other's yards, I dug it up and planted it in a couple pots (had only been in the ground a month). And yes, it Buddah's nicely in pots, especially once it gets really pot bound.. but then it quickly eats up all the soil in the pot and keeping its roots wet requires watering it daily in the summers, (or you get that icky curled up leaf problem... or worse, leaf drop). It eventually became a huge, thicket of stems, so I had to start trimming it back severely.. had ant problems and scale, too (common to all Bambusa in So Cal) so eventually got rid of it.. oh well. Get Bambusa vulgaris 'Wamin' if you want a nice controlled species with cool swollen internodes.

A very interesting bamboo. For it to form the little bulges that reflects its name, the plant has to be pot bound. The more the better. We left ours in a one gallon black plastic nursery pot and then planted it in the ground. Seems to love it.

All bamboo flower once and then die. Depending on the type it may take up to 100 years or more before it flowers but once it starts that is the end of it's life cycle.

On a positive note it does produce thousands of seeds and if you put some seed bedding mix below the plant many of them will germinate and start growing so you can save the best and get a new plant that will not flower again in your life, unless you live to be over 100!

Flowering for the first time in years. March-April 2004. How often does this plant flower?