Soil and moisture have a lot to do with survival of transplants, but I have better luck with smaller divisions as compared to larger ones.

From my experience, larger culms have a better survivial rate when you have a larger rootball, although they can survive with extra care. The smaller culms, or even whipshoots, survive with less roots since they need less food because of their size.

Kt

Something else to consider is that the whipshoot is still a shoot and is growing, and thus probably has stored energy in it's underground rhizomes giving it energy to survive as long as some of the rhizomes were dug up with the whip.

Your division may have had fully grown culms or even yearling culms that may have spent all of their stored energy and are now trying to produce it's food to sustain itself.

Large, full grown culms and yearling culms are tougher to keep from dying especially if the rootmass was small compared to the above ground culms. I believe that dieback occurs, to some extent, when the roots aren't able to produce enough food for the culms whether from lack of water or from too small of a rootball. Just a thought...

Kt