Dendrocalamus giganteus
BAMBOO WORLD specialises in easily controlled clumping bamboos ("non-running" bamboos) that are quite predictable with respect to maximum size and shape. Many are ideal as an exotic garden plant for even small suburban gardens without any fear of them spreading beyond their predicted size. These beautiful, diverse, non-invasive clumping-type bamboos tend to originate from the tropical or warmer climate areas of the world, although there are many that tolerate cold climate periods, including frost and temperatures down to minus 9 or even -12 degrees Celsius, and some few even lower.

Clumping bamboos (sympodial or unicaespitose) produce only a single culm, a vertical growing shoot, from each new rhizome. The rhizome is the swollen woody mass that forms just underground against or within the circular clump. It forms the bottom or supporting section of each culm, from which the very fine feeder roots radiate outwards in a circle around the clump. These clumping bamboos are predictable, easily controlled, easily harvested, and can even be kept smaller than ‘type’ by removing unwanted shoots (and eating them, as most are edible).

New (clumping) shoots leave the ground during summer, reaching their maximum ultimate culm diameter soon after breaking out of the ground and telescoping upwards to within 90% of final height very quickly; in fact within 60 to 120 days, depending on the species size. Some grow as much as a metre in a day!

Our clumping species, listed above, include everything from miniature bamboos that never exceed 1 metre in height, ideal for a small garden or pot, to exotic giant structural bamboos towering 35 metres, that make a magnificent but controlled statement in a larger landscape setting. Many of them are high quality eating bamboos, some grown in plantation situations within Asia for that purpose, and many are widely used as structural bamboos, or for weaving, screen making, basketry, lashings, paper making, musical instrument making, fishing rods, fences, furniture, futon bases, kitchen utensils, medicine and a diversity of other uses.