BAMBUSA MULTIPLEX TINY FERN

 

2' height, Sun, 15 degrees F Minimum, Clumper.

        Sport of Riviereorum, an extreme dwarf with tiny 1" leaves growing densely on closely grouped stems.

        Slow, almost feeble - an excellent bonsai if you can supply it with an ICU or be able to ignore its constantly changing demands for more water, an acid soil mix, lots of leafmold, less water, more sun, rotted horse manure, Osmocote, less sun, a fish oil massage, gently blowing smelling salt vapors across its leaves.  It ain't easy, but for those who love it, it's worth the effort.  The appeal of this plant is similar to the attractiveness possessed by those pale, wan, languishing, slightly tubercular heroines in Victorian novels, damsels subject to fainting or worse at the slightest ill humor, a velvet footstool slightly askew, a lost hairpin or some such tragedy.

        Otherwise it wouldn't be called "Tiny Fern", but rather the "Large Monstrously Robust Fernlike Bamboo!"

        A 2 gallon pot sold at the 1986 ABS auction for $50.  A gallon pot 12" high sold for $25 at the 1995 SCABS auction.