Both clumping varieties grow tall enough so they create a greenish blue wall higher than her home, which is built nine feet off the ground. My sister has ringed her New Orleans home with twenty bamboo plants, including Gracilis ( Bambusa textilis) and blue bamboo ( Bambusa chungii). Also, a twelve-volt hacksaw with a pruning blade makes pruning bamboo infinitely easier. ![]() I’ve since learned there are better tools specifically designed for digging bamboo, like one called “The Slammer.” Made up of a sharp metal blade welded to a hollow pipe, the tool is used by inserting a heavy metal rod into the tube, slamming it down and driving the blade into the ground and through the rhizome. When I noticed mine too close to a fence, I spent an afternoon with a pickaxe and a hand saw removing roots and dead canes. “Judge” Edwards III, who is the President of the Louisiana Gulf Coast Chapter of the American Bamboo Society, at his home, which boasts the oldest grove of Moso timber bamboo in the state.Īs I had learned from my experience with clumping bamboo, the groves do, in certain locations, require containing. Reaching down to dig up a creeping rhizome in our pathway, he seemed just as impressed with the plant’s powerful growth as frustrated by its invasiveness. The new species is beautiful, he said, so he is working on ways to contain it and control its spread. He shook his head, saying “It slept, crept, then leapt right out of the pots!” referring to an oft-noted pattern in bamboo’s growth habits. He pointed out a few barely visible pots hidden within the unwieldy patch of purple-caned temple bamboo, which his cousin had gifted him a few years ago. I wasn’t a fanatic, but you get infected, you know." - W.P. I passed the beautiful, golden, green-striped canes of Alphonse Karr ( Bambusa multiplex), learned about the well-spaced nodules of Bambusa textilis-which makes great catfish poles-and listened to Judge’s story of the temple bamboo ( Semiarundinaria fastuosa) that got away. The honking goose greeted us near a workshop sided with split bamboo canes. I wasn’t a fanatic, but you get infected, you know,” he told me as we toured his collection of fifteen different bamboo species spread out over about three acres. Judge remembers playing in the historic Moso grove as a child, surrounded by the tall canes that once reached as high as seventy-five feet and as wide as seven inches in diameter. He is currently employing a small excavator, bagged leaves, a flock of chickens, and a large goose to help improve the soil-loosening it while adding in natural materials. He attributes its sparse culms to poor soil quality and compaction from when the grove was cleared with heavy equipment in the 1980s. The grove has been struggling since Judge acquired it. “Judge” Edwards III, the President of the Louisiana Gulf Coast Chapter of the American Bamboo Society, bought his great uncle’s Victorian-style home in Abbeville, it came with the oldest grove of Moso timber bamboo ( Phyllostachys edulis) in the state, planted by Dr. ![]() Modern day agricultural and cattle grazing practices have reduced the canebrakes in South Louisiana drastically, but recent efforts by Chitimacha leaders have resulted in the re-establishment of the river cane on the Chitimacha Reservation-ensuring a supply of material for basketweaving, which remains an integral part of the Chitimacha culture.īamboo, both native and imported varieties, is notoriously hardy in South Louisiana, but it can and does suffer when the land suffers. ![]() ![]() River cane is a running bamboo which grows in thickets referred to as canebrakes. Arundinaria gigantea, or river cane, remains integral to the tribe’s basket weaving traditions, as well as those of other native peoples in the region. Like most people, I knew bamboo had origins in faraway places like Asia and South America, but a Chitimacha basket weaver recently pointed out to me that the people of Louisiana have been nurturing and utilizing native bamboo for thousands of years in the low-lying lands of the Chitimacha people around Charenton. I have since learned much more about growing bamboo in South Louisiana, encouraged along the way by local bamboo enthusiasts who have shown me how to maintain it, love it, and even eat it. From my rudimentary knowledge of bamboo, I knew there were two kinds-clumping, which was “good,” and running, which could break through your neighbors’ fence and take over the yard in the middle of the night. Twelve years ago, we moved to a home that came with two well-established clumps of bamboo at the back fence. “Judge” Edwards III, who is the President of the Louisiana Gulf Coast Chapter of the American Bamboo Society, at his home, which boasts the oldest grove of Moso timber bamboo in the state-as well as Edwards’ own collection of various bamboo species.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |