Plant · P-153

Moso Bamboo

Phyllostachys edulis

Moso Bamboo is a genuine vegetable crop, not just a timber plant that happens to be edible - young spring shoots are a prized delicacy, with a published yield of 5 to 8 tonnes per hectare a year. The same grove also yields far more timber by weight: canes that have gone into water pipes, construction, weaving and papermaking, growing up to three feet in a single day at peak season. It needs steady moisture through the growing season - a droughted grove survives but will not shoot - so it belongs below a pond overflow or on the wet side of a swale, never on a creek, where its litter disrupts stream life. Its running rhizomes spread aggressively and need an annual root-pruning cut to stay contained, though goats grazing that same perimeter will eat the escaping shoots for you.