Bamboo World by Victor Cusack is my tropical bamboo reference book, there may be others that are better. I do have to ignore his attacks on running bamboo though!

Are his attacks on running bamboo justified? Oh no, I have planted bromus giganticus on my place. I think my doom was foretold in the nostradamus prophecies.

Victor is Australian and running bamboo has a bad reputation in Australia due to some Aurea & Japonica (I think) growing over such a vast area that they've choked out native plants. Therefore he is trying really hard to inform people that not all bamboo is evil, in fact the clumpers are anything but and he does a serious job of pointing out all of the advantages that clumpers have over the evil runner, but...ouch Victor.

I think that Nostradamus was a clumper himself, so he may be like Victor...

i'll try them, but wish someone would give me more help on books. thanks for the replys everything helps

Aaaaaaa (I hope I've got that right:))
Try bamboos.com/bookstore.html
Loads there.
Nik

Unfortunately there are no real books that go deep into propagating bamboo. Most info I found was through here, searching the web, and trial and erroe.

I have had great success with some of the easy ones such as B vulgaris and B Oldhamii using double/single node cuttings and branch cuttings. I will be trying my Vitatta and Ventricosa really soon. Someday I'll take pics and make a procedure for others to reference.

Propagating using branch and culm cuttings does not work for all tropical species either.

Also, I just found this while googling for "bamboo propagation". Maybe it will help.

http://www1.harlingen.isd.tenet.edu/scripts/wa.exe?A2=ind0503&L=tbs&T=0amp;F=&S=&P=810

Here is a link that might be useful: Bamboo Propagation Pics