1y ago

This bamboo stalk got snapped almost completely in half during a storm two years ago, and yet it still lives.

I can't figure out how it could possibly be drawing enough nutrients to live, and yet there it is. I'd have chopped it up and dragged it away but now I'm impressed and want to see how long it goes on.

21 comments

Nothing can kill bamboo. That’s why it’s considered invasive in areas it’s not local to, it just goes
- MFW I introduce bamboo to my Animal Crossing New Leaf town
  
  Get offerings ready to worship your new bamboo overlords
  
  If bamboo worked in Animal Crossing the way it does IRL, I'd make sure to never plant any because it would replace weeds faster than weeds appear. You walk out of your house the next day and it'd just be a wall of bamboo. Timmy and Tommy would die of starvation as I am unable to make it to the town center and pay off my debts to them or deliver any fruit.
  
  Flowers are the real invasive species there. Unchecked those fuckers just go.
- not only that, its also incredibly hard to contain.
  
  That's what I keep hearing, but all the bamboo I've tried to grow died after a couple of years. Am I doing something wrong?
Bamboo is just a really big grass. Most grasses can handle having their stems bent to extreme angles because they're hollow. So the bending folds the outer layer rather than ripping it apart entirely.
- In the pictures it's clear it's not just folded, though. Most of the stalk is severed, barring one little strip of bark. And it's still flourishing. Wild.
"Bamboo stalk don't care, Bamboo stalk don't give a fuck"
Read in the Honey Badger video voice.
The only way it will die is if you dig it up by the roots and burn it dude. That stuffs indestructible lol
While it doesn't really apply to bamboo, this is kind of the way hedgerows are laid. The main trunk of the "tree" is cut most of the way through (called a pleacher), then laid on its side. New growth then sprouts from both the laid trunk, still getting nutrients from the stump, and the stump itself.
Check out coppice if you're more interested. It's pretty amazing what trees can do.
- I was just about to mention this. I wonder if people have used bamboo to make hedgerows...
Bamboo is a type of grass, a mowed lawn keeps on growing.
- But usually the clippings stop growing
Life, uhhh, finds a way.
Yeah you cant really kill a weed by folding it over
Check the new growth near the ground for roots, it may have rooted?
Oh God bamboo haunts my dreams. It was in our backyard when we moved in, creeping ever closer to the house. I wanted to get rid of it to plant native stuff and it was such a battle. I assume it's still under there and is just part of the "grass" now, since the whole lawn is mixed green weeds anyway. But it's gone, has been for a couple years now and we are establishing the landscape, have a food garden and two trees and various plants the pollinators like to hang out in.

21 comments