I can't answer your question, but I can say this: I just passed through your charming town during a roadtrip (which happened to take detours for plants) I contacted whom I think is your 'Merchant,' but he was out, and sadly I left town before he returned. I ended up buying P. aurea in Salem, OR, and will be interested to see the answer to your question, as I face them as well here in Colorado.

I have two potential homes for P. aurea myself: A winter-warm spot under a locust tree's dappled shade, and a winter-cold area shaded in winter and complete exposure in summer.

A note: I also brought back a P. nigra for a friend of mine and I can't wait to see what it does for her in a downtown microclimate.

James

Aurea prefers full sun and moist soil. If you don't give it sunshine then maybe it won't have the vigor to spread as it otherwise might. That's what I'm guessing the dealer meant. I hope it works out for you. Also, I think bamboo leaves that don't receive strong sunshine retain a nicer/newer appearance.

I don't think you should be afraid of it, but I also don't think it will act like a clumper forever. Since it's bordered on two sides by a foundation and a retaining wall, I don't think you have to worry about it moving in those two directions. It's not going to do anything to your foundation and it might go under the retaining wall, but you would then only have to worry about rhizome pruning on the far side of the wall. On the other two sides, I presume you would have room to rhizome prune if needed. What exactly is your concern about it? It will do fine in bright shade: my neighbor has a small grove of it growing in those conditions.

Thanks Kudzu. I'm glad to hear it will do fine in bright shade. My concern was more to do with the retaining wall. It's not really a wall, but more of a rip-rap of large boulders. My house is one of those daylight basement deals, with the basement partly underground, in a hillside. So...that means a slope on both ends of the house, and the dirt on this particular end (the north one) is held back with these boulders. I want to put bamboo at the base of this rip-rap in order to screen a window. Any rhizomes spreading under the rocks would be a problem because I couldn't get between the bamboo and the rocks to root prune, and if it grew into the rip-rap, who knows where it would come up. This is a narrow strip between the houses, and only inches from the property line.

I think I'm going to grow this one in a whiskey barrel.

Put a Fargesia there instead, it would be more beautiful anyway. Golden bamboo is a nursery staple, so there are plenty around in unsuitable locations that look terrible. I have also seen this popping up throughout an entire resisdential lot (in California), truly a phytophobe's nightmare.

The same droughty, perhaps infertile conditions that often result in black or golden bamboos growing in clumps here also tend to produce a shabby looking specimen, with lots of dead material.

Speaking of black bamboo and Bellingham, I saw a hedge of it planted in the reportedly milder, southwest part of town burn up in the 1990 winter. So, I have to wonder how it might do in Colorado.

I realize that a hardy, clumping bamboo would be the obvious choice. My reason for not going with Fargesia is that the Fargesia is not tall enough to screen the window I need to screen.

Also, the spot is neither droughty nor infertile. It's in bright shade. As I said, I think my best bet is to grow it as a container plant, and I would provide it with proper water and fertilizer. My understanding is that golden is often recommended as a container plant.

So, the only issue left is sunlight. Are you saying that golden will be a pyhtophobe's nightmare (Is grass an herb?) if grown in bright shade rather than full sun?

Look into clumpers Bambusa textilis or, my favorite in my Z8b, B. tuldoides.

A Ph. is going to root-fill a 2' x 2' space pretty quickly.

Why put a "boring" plant like Aurea there? You can do better with a hardy clumper that will get to 15 or 20 feet in your zone and growing conditions. Fargesia robusta is very erect and will do the screening job, stay in bounds with good sized culms up to an inch or so in diameter. It's a March shooter in the NW and puts out several beautiful color contrasted new culms each year. It matures quickly to size. A real joy to own. JMO.

Ok, you convinced me to get something different. The bambusas seem a bit tender, so I don't think I'll go that route (we get a winter thing from the Frasier River Valley). The Fargesia Robusta looks like it would be tall enough if I can depend upon 15 feet.

The question then is, I thought that Fargesias were flowering. Do I need to make sure to find a new seedling source if I'm getting robusta, or is the flowering just with nitida?

I have not heard of robusta flowering. I have had mine for 4 years and it's over 12 feet high by 4 feet wide and standing tall.It's in half day full sun.Very nice plant.

Bellingham-
You're right that nitida is flowering, but that doesn't have any implications for the other Fargesias: any of them could flower tomorrow or in 50 years! One thing you could do is get F. nitida seedlings from the recent flowering and then you probably wouldn't have to worry. Just make sure that you get them from a reliable vendor so you don't get "old" fargesia being peddled as next generation.

Is it possible that aurea rhizomes can occasionally share their culms tendency to have compacted bases?

Robusta will easily get to your 15 feet in our area with regular and deliberate aftercare meaning summer irrigation and applications of fertilizer throughout the growing season. Mine gets neither and it still is by far the most prolific fargesia we have. I like it almost as much as our flowering nitidas. :(

Placed my order with Bambu-u last night. Just as an aside, that guy really seems to be on top of his business. He called me within about an hour of my placing an on-line order to ask if it was alright for him to wait until Monday to ship since it's going to be so hot the next few days.

Remember when two attendants would rush out to the pump when you ran over the bell? One to fill the gas and check your oil, the other to check the tire pressure? Uh-huh, that's what I'm talking about...

This year was the first year I bought from bambu-u. When I received the package what I was expecting was the bamboo to be in 1 gallon pots like the other bamboo companies I have ordered from. But bambu-u has a little different method which looks like they go out and dig it out of their garden bed. I was a little weary of this, but as of August their looking great. I noticed on a few of them like the phyllostachys auerosulcata it looked like they were propagated with a cane laid on the ground horizontally and rooted. Very interesting company indeed.

lkz5ia-
I've bought from bambu-u many times, and never got a bad plant. I'm close by to Marc's place, so I've picked out a lot of mine in person. It's my understanding that he doesn't just dig up plants and send them out, but puts divisions in pots for several months to make sure they're stabilized. When you buy from him by mail, I believe he unpots them and trims down the rootball so shipping won't be so expensive. I've toured his whole place several times and have never seen the type of propagation you're referring to...and I don't think this method would work very well with a Phyllostachys. You may just have gotten a field division with some side growth that had been trimmed off.