Running bamboo is notoriously fast spreading and difficult to remove. What keeps its population balanced in the wild, and prevents it from crowding out the competition? I tried googling, but was inundated with gardening advice, horror stories, and assault / offensive gardening (some of the latter two presumably covering the same incident from both sides). My google-fu failed, I couldn’t really find any info about natural population controls of running bamboo in the thicket of tall tales and gardening advice.
Same question for morning glory, blackberries, and every other kind of wildly spreading thing.
Peppermint (mentha piperita): hold my tea!
Japanese knotweed (Reynoutria japonica): Amateurs!
Climate for one. At least where I’m at its too cold for bamboo to grow. Even in peak summer it’ll try to spread but its only a matter of time till the frost destroy it.
Now kudzu on the other hand. That shit is fucking up everything.
Pandas, yo.
Kung fu pandas specifically.
Guardians. Silent watchers. The unsung heroes.
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It is the same as other easily spreading plants. In their native habitats there are checks like diseases and predators. When you move them out of those habitats they can thrive at a new level because of the lack of those things.
Do they eat enough to kill it and the root system off? My understanding is if the roots survive they just keep spreading anyway?
Not only diseases and predators keep them in check, there are also other plants that can effectively compete with them in their native range too
Bamboo is monocarpic (true bamboo at least.). The huge clonal colony flowers once and dies, even below ground. The seeds that fall grow the next generation.
Bamboo species tend to all flower at the same time at the end of a years or decades long cycle. This bottlenecks how much it can spread clonally (underground roots) but gives it another method to spread.
Rats, mice, and other rodents eat the seeds, so there is some ecosystem regulation already
Places with good habitat but no native bamboos like Hawaii have really bad problems with colonies taking over huge areas
and thats why chickens lay eggs so often.
Leaves/shoots are where the energy comes from. If they get destroyed enough the root will die. Usually gardeners just aren’t that patient.
Climate for one. At least where I’m at its too cold for bamboo to grow. Even in peak summer it’ll try to spread but its only a matter of time till the frost destroy it.
Now kudzu on the other hand. That shit is fucking up everything.
That’s as an invasive species, but what about in its home climate?
US South? I swear to calculus like 2/3 of Atlanta is covered in kudzu, it’s nuts.
Yeah. It’s been wrecking the south. Can’t take a step without running into it.
Kudzu is edible, which I’m guessing will come in handy for the South about halfway through the Trump administration.
Kudzu won’t grow where I live either. I’m not actually sure what the equivalent would be. Dandelions are the most unstoppable plant I can think of. Creeping bell flowers are maybe a close second.
there is a lot of native bamboo in all places, so it is resilient and a lot of the times the other stuff can only catch on if its provided a space. it can then go invasive… but thats not what youre talking about
i think a lot of it is just aesthetics and that people don’t like bamboo
Bamboo rats feed on the underground roots of bamboo plants.
I’m not sure how much of an impact they make, but I can imagine they keep some of the growth in check.So weird how they’re inside the bamboo
It can’t grow on the ocean. Yet.
Because they know what will happen if they try that shit again.
You should read Semiosis, a sci-fi book about a planet with a lot of bamboo.
It’s an awesome book! I LOVE the angle the writer takes on alien life
I’m intrigued.
Pandas
They don’t call them Great Pandas for nothing
The tiki bar industry.
Bamboo is kind of a tree in this case which is an area I know more about and I think many of these factors would apply to bamboo as well. First forests used to actually be more rare than today before humans came along. Europe and North America was covered by endless plains which were grazed by huge numbers of ruminant animals. Any tree that would try to grow would get grazed before it could grow so tall that the animals couldn’t eat it anymore. That’s why grass thrives in such an environment, it’s practically made to get grazed. Once cut it quickly grows back again. Once ancient humans came along and hunted most of the grazing animals extinct forest suddenly started spreading like crazy until almost the entirety of Europe was forested (which was then to a large extent deforested again after agriculture was invented). Grass simply can’t compete against trees for sunlight. Therefore I would expect less or none bamboo in areas with a huge grazing wild life populations. And I don’t mean animals that would eat the leaves, but the ones that would eat the new seedling.
Another thing that limits trees is moisture. In general the drier the climate the less beneficial it is to be a tree. That’s because deep roots are of no benefit in dry climates (but they are of huge benefit in humid climates during drought). Grass which generally have very shallow roots suck up all the rain before it can penetrate deep into the soil while deep tree roots never get any significant amount of water. Trees handle drought well but constant dryness is very detrimental for them. Dry areas also tend to have wild fires which also hamper trees. It’s simply better to be a grass (if moderately dry) or a cactus like plant if it’s extremely dry.
Another factor is soil conditions. Now I don’t know what soil bamboo prefers but I doubt it’s all soil. Soil can have huge impacts on things like pH and water availability. For example in far Northern Europe where I live you can tell that you are standing on sandy soil if all around you are spruces and pines. If you however see lots of leaf trees you are probably on a silt and clay soil. This is because conifers handle both dry and sour soil better than the local leaf trees which leads to more conifers on sand. Bamboo is probably also limited to a certain soil condition.
I hope that can at least help you develop more theories on why bamboo is not everywhere. Something important to remember is that just because a plant can grow well in a certain location doesn’t mean it will be found there. That’s because plants are always in fierce competition. I bet bamboo if intentionally planted and cared for could thrive in lots more places than its found naturally, but it just happens to not be the best plant in that location, meaning it’s outcompeted over long time scales.
Thanks! You’ve been the most detailed and helpful answer.
Thank you for this! Outstanding knowledge!
Bamboo is not a kind of tree in the slightest. It is a kind of grass.
Trees are not a taxonomic group. It’s rather a description of characteristics the most important of which is having a woody trunk. For example there are tree legumes and non-tree legumes. A species of tree can therefore be more closely related to a non-tree than to other trees. However it’s totally true bamboo is not a tree. A grass could in theory however hit all the characteristics that are required to be tree and would then be considered as such, however no such grass happens to exist.
Are palm trees not a grass?
Palm trees are monocots and are therefore related to grasses, however they are not grasses themselves. Monocots are a really broad group though. Kinda like saying a certain animal is a mammal. Important distinction but still very broad.
I think it’s probably a combination of animals that eat bamboo and climates/habitats not suitable for bamboo.
If you broaden your question only slightly from bamboo to bamboo and its close relatives, then it has taken over the world. It’s in the grass family, and in no small part thanks to humans, it’s literally everywhere.
