Early shoots of 2011

This year has been very slow to warm up, however it has been warm the last couple days, getting well into the 70s with lots of rain so some of my earliest bamboos are starting to shoot. Since my yellow groove is starting to shoot, hopefully that means that most of the other phyllostachys are only 1-2 weeks out, but it will also depend on how the weather is. I know there's going to be plenty of rain since we've been consistently doubling or tripling the average monthly rainfall however the temperatures have remained consistently below average since December of 2010.

Here's my f rufa. The in-ground one looks like it's only putting out a few shoots. Must be a bad location for it, or it is on its off year.

 The potted ones are close to leafing out now, and producing a lot more.

Now for the most exciting one so far, the yellow groove bamboo is starting to shoot and it looks like the new shoots are clearly larger than the existing culms, but by how much, I won't know for another few days since they haven't completely come out of the ground yet.

Moso seedlings seem to always come back after top-kill. Most of mine were completely defoliated and had some culm damage, but the bottom few nodes usually stay green. The big moso is still not shooting yet.

Here's a 2009 batch moso, one of the 3 I still have left, and it's putting on some decent size as expected.

Here's one of the potted moso coming back after complete defoliation, and partial top-kill

 My largest phyllostachys parvifolia division is putting out 2 shoots about the same size as the original culm in the division. This division was taken last summer so I'm pleased with the results so far.

Phyllostachys Nuda has been under-performing since I got it back in spring of 2009 as it hasn't put on much size since then, and this year, it looks like the same story, but this could just be a whip shoot, and bigger ones may follow.