BAMBUSA TULDOIDES VENTRICOSA

Probable height in Southern California within 3 years = 30'
Probable ultimate height in Southern California = 50'
Height in habitat = 55'
Loses leaves around 15 to 20 degrees Fahrenheit.
Loses canes around 10 to 15 degrees Fahrenheit.
Dies around 0 to 5 degrees Fahrenheit.
If growing in the ground it prefers to grow in full sun.
A clumping bamboo - rhizomes will not run sideways.
Minimum soil depth required for a healthy plant = 1'
Unrestrained rhizome depth in moist soil = 2'
 
        Bought as a small plant at a nursery in Canton, China by Dr. McClure in the early 1940's, taken to Puerto Rico & planted in the USDA growing grounds.  Years later he came back & was amazed at how big it had become.  In the 1980's Dr. Soderstrom examined the flowers, felt it might be a form of B. tuldoides & devoted quite a bit of USDA research into attempting to prove that premise.
        A mysterious vigorous clumping plant.  It has 2 modes of growth.  (1) Most canes are large, tall and rather irregular with no bellies.  (2) Some canes are shorter with knobby bellies.  No one has determined what causes the difference.  Sometimes type (1) will turn into type (2), and vice-versa.  Anyway, plants sold with this name are very mixed in size and habit of growth, so much so that I hesitate to guarantee how big or what the mature plant will look like.
        In Chinese markets the plants are for sale in small pots with many decorative bellies. But nobody in the U.S. has figured out how to produce those plants.
        We found 70' tall clumping timber bamboo near a Frank Lloyd Wright house in Pasadena with the original gardener intact.  He planted bambusa ventricosa with bellies in the 1920's.  The canes are 5" in diameter, straight, widely spaced and have no bellies.
        Talk about vigorous plants,  the Eggplant That Ate Chicago or The Attack Of The Killer Tomatoes!  This plant could star in an X-rated sex/sci-fi time-delay MTV flick called "HOW GREEN IS MY BELLY?"  An androgynous bamboo wearing ladies underwear is featured, along with its seductive lady caretaker.  Bosoms & bellies dissolve & reform constantly while students, gardeners & mad scientists cavort, celebrating one unexpected transmogramation after another.  
        Everybody's first favorite Bamboo - if it gets out of control, grows too big too fast or eats the cat, dig it up & send it to us, we'll take all we can get, especially when it has those knobby swollen bellies.  The problem with this is that when you think you have the answer, the plant changes its mind & reverts.  Mark Hooten has grown a plant in boggy soil at the Edison Plantation in Florida with knobby culms.  We have 'normal' 15 gallon pots 12' high which, even when watered heavily, will occasionally put out a heavily knobby dwarfed culm.  Kioshi Yoshida gave us a dwarf heavily knobby plant in a 15 gallon pot from Florida Gideon stock, under our care it put out 'normal' tall straight canes.
        Did McClure know what he was doing when he started this madness?  Did Soderstrom understand what was happening?  Do we have an answer?  No.  Maybe you can figure it out.  
        Jean Harrington grew a 25' tall plant from a small pot in St Pete, Florida in 2 years.  It suffered only minor damage when hit with 27 degrees overnight in 1995.
        We supplied 15 gallon pots which were installed in 2000 at the corner of Stuart and Pennsylvania in Santa Monica - I understand it was not a good choice of variety by the contractor and they are kept cut down as a hedge plant near the property line.