Buddha's Belly Bamboo 'Ventricosa'

On Aug 13, 2010, allenysi from Palm City, FL wrote:

Planted four 30 lb Bambusa Ventricosa, four 30 lb. Mutibolis (my favorite-has the most character), and three 30 lb Textilis Gracilis a year ago July (mid rainy season) in Palm City, Fl, 80 miles North of Ft. Lauderdale. The property is 100' X 300', landscaped with mostly Live Oaks, Palms, and a Poinciana. The Bamboo are arrayed along the 100' rear lot line as a screen from a two lane road. Some get full sun all day, and others are shaded in the afternoon by some of the Oaks. They all look healthy and happy despite the sandy soil, and are just now going through a growth spurt. Gonna add 4 more to the line as fillers, in a few weeks.

On Aug 19, 2004, palmbob from Acton, CA (Zone 8b) wrote:

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 ha... read mored 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.

On May 7, 2004, dbinnix from Garden Grove, CA wrote:

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!