PHYLLOSTACHYS BAMBUSOIDES (Japanese Timber Bamboo)
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Probable height in Southern California within 3 years = 25'
Probable ultimate height in Southern California = 40'
Height in habitat = 70'
Loses leaves around 5 to 10 degrees Fahrenheit.
Loses canes around -10 to -5 degrees Fahrenheit.
Dies around -30 to -25 degrees Fahrenheit.
If growing in the ground it prefers to grow in full sun.
Running bamboo - rhizomes will run sideways and downward in moist earth unless restrained with a root barrier.
Minimum soil depth required for a healthy plant = 1'
Japanese Timber Bamboo, Madake, Hardy Giant Timber Bamboo, Phyllostachys quilioi, Phyllostachys reticulata.
 
        Introduced in the U.S. from China in 1866.
        Large diameter (Up to 4" in the U.S., generally 2-2 1/2" in California), thick-walled shiny dark green culms.  Highly ornamental giant plant with big, beautiful, straight culms with their lower portions free of branches & leaves.  Can be cultivated to produce a grove of wide-spaced culms that are a joy to walk among.
        Rhizomes may run 10' horizontally below ground before putting up a new culm, & the ground in the grove becomes criss-crossed with a mat of underground runners that grasp & hold the soil together in one large pad, not unlike the way steel reinforcing rods hold together a pad of concrete.  The new green culm sheaths are heavily splotched with purple & the tiny leaf tips on the culm sheath are straight, unlike Vivax, which has zigzag tips on the culm sheaths.  Vivax also commonly has canes which slightly zig-zag & have fine vertical ridges.   Very edible shoots which are said to be a little bitter but much in demand for oriental restaurants.   Anybody who could produce quantities of shoots could sell all they grow.  The problem is that we all fall in love with the plants, they are so saleable as landscape materials that nobody in the U.S.  we know of has yet got around to growing them for eating.
        In Auburn, Alabama 2,900 canes/acre/year have been grown.  In Savannah, Georgia the yield has been 1,760 2" diameter canes/acre/year.  In Bakersfield, California the yield has been 395 3-4" diameter canes/acre/year.   Kyoto, Japan has produced 1,700 1 1/2" diameter canes/acre/year, 890 2" diameter canes/acre/year, 600 3 1/2-4" diameter canes/acre/year.
        The most widely-grown Bamboo in Japan for timber & other commercial use. 70% of all Japanese Bamboo is madake.  It was also widely distributed in the U.S. until most plants flowered & died during the 70's.  Because of that, large groves of madake are now rare in the U.S. 
        Specimens in Europe during the severe winter of 1984-85 had their leaves damaged at 7 degrees Fahrenheit.   It is said they can take 0 degrees F. without losing foliage.  The roots & rhizomes can survive -20 degrees F. to grow again in the spring.  David Andrews reports major leaf damage at 9 degrees F. & major rhizome damage at -8 degrees F.   None of the giant Japanese timber bamboo seem to need a winter and do well even in Southern Florida.