Yep, I think there's a way to do it but only a few know how to. I heard that not too long ago a woman here in the PNW cracked the formula to the vegetative cloning of bamboo and well...now she's basically rich because large companies are offering her $$$ for the method.

are you asking about tissue culture cloning or something else. You can propagate clumping bamboos with culm cuttings because the energy for growth is stored in the nodes. You might want to search out bamboo tissue culture.

You have to realize that there are over 1200 varieties of bamboo out there, so the kind you purchase is likely not the kind you see growing wild or commonly grown in someone's yard.

The more rare varieties are the expensive ones. Clumpers seem to be easiest to reproduce using culm or limb cuttings, but even then, you won't have a sellable plant for up to a year, so the price can still be high.

Kt

Culm cuttings don't work on running bamboo, which are the majority of the species available in the U.S. You can propagate running bamboo from pieces of rhizome, but the success rate is highly variable, and it can take more than a year to get a modest size plant.

Also, why are you "having it shipped halfway across the country" when there are a number of bamboo sellers in Texas?