How do you know its gregarious flowering and not sporadic? I looked up the year and the last one was in 2008, and black bamboo has a 40-60 year flowering period?
https://www.masterclass.com/articles/bamboo-flowering
This guy's black bamboo is also flowering, and he mentioned others are going through it also. :-\
Well he seems quite confident that it might not necessarily die. Phyllostachys nigra being one of the gregarious ones. UK and Europe wide. I will feed it like mad and see if it helps
He said he chopped it down and feed it, seems like forcing it to grow again since it didn't finish its flowering. If you want privacy screening you could find a native willow that has fast growth and copice it 2 or three times after it reaches 10-12 foot, they readily root so you can use the top to start a lot of them, plus, if you've got headaches you can use the bark to make dank aspirin water, works really well, and its loaded with rooting hormones so if you like transplanting or rooting cuttings you'll always have it, plus you never have to worry about it dying, or sprouting elsewhere, and eventually, it'll become a monumental tree, nothing quite as beautiful as a weeping willow. Over here our willows don't droop down, they're branching is more stout and short and it fans out instead.
I will have a look for native willows. I know that it is a common thing to grow for the think branches that people make things with. Might be for another bit though, I have a bamboo fixation!
Our willows grow almost like bamboo, especially when you copice them, the leaves are very similar too and they are the last to drop in winter so it keeps its use as privacy screen, mind you its Texas.
I have had a look, most seem perfectly suited to here. They seem to like damp, wet boggy conditions which is kinda perfect for Scotland. Defo something I will get
All these were small 8-10 ft wild growin plants 18 months ago that got pulled out from ditches we had dug last February, I just laid them down uprooted and everything and they started growing from the original trunk, the second picture with the driveway right behind them, those ones I had chopped down about 4 months ago,maybe even less, and as you can see they came back with a furry. The first picture is one that hasn't been chopped down since it got uprooted and laid down. I tried growing bamboo here, dug out by my old man from somewhere in North Carolina, but it didn't make it, in between the heat and flooding it didn't have a chance but I've been eyeing bamboo for a while and we will probably order some giant species, but for privacy I'm settled on the willows. If it had rained this season the ones I chopped down and stuck in soil (around the time they were starting to flower) would be worth showing off, but for now are nothing more than dried twigs, though I do hope they took to rooting, I stuck em in when we had a very brief rain so I'm gonna let them be ugly stick until this October just on the off chance they threw some roots.
Quite impressive! I am definitely sold on the willow.
I have a giant bamboo, it is only a baby though. Two years old and just about thigh high with the odd shoot waist high. It's chusquea gigantica I think, apparently the canes when they start properly appearing canon be really think and massively tall like 30, 40 foot.
I like growing shit, it seems you do too. I like the idea of willow also for the dank aspirin bark water you mentioned. Herbal is good
Yup, you dry the bark for a couple of days, then chop it up and set it in water in the fridge for a day, don't quote me though, been a couple years and the missus concocted it, but it certainly has the aspirin taste and effect.