Legitimate mail order bamboo nurseries will not typically sell only root masses or cuttings. Many bamboo can't be reproduced from cuttings, and growing bamboo from rhizome masses is iffy, and it will take many years to have a plant that is even head high if you are successful.

My suggestions:

1. Pay your local nursery to deliver the plant.

2. Get a friend with a trailer or pickup truck to help you.

3. Flip down the rear seat of your car so you can have the pot sitting up front in the passenger seat and the rest of the plant passing back into the trunk. It will be easy to bend the top of the plant to fit inside the closed trunk without breaking the branches.

4. Order a plant for delivery from an online bamboo nursery. What you get will be healthy and far superior to anything you could grow from roots. lewisbamboo.com in Alabama is a reliable vendor of timber bamboo, and they have free delivery on orders over $50.

5. Avoid buying bamboo rhizomes from eBay. You never really know what plant species you're getting, and the rhizomes often arrive dried out and dead,

6. Avoid the temptation to buy bamboo seeds on line. Many of the sellers are foreign, and it's illegal to import bamboo seeds into the U.S., though it's done. Also, bamboo seeds typically lose viability within a few months and you never know how old seeds are, or what species they really are. And, it will take years to grow a decent size plant if you are successful in getting seeds to germinate.

There are several places that sell bamboo in Houston. The one in Seabrook, Maas Nursery, has some excellent specimens and at reasonable prices, but some may be too tall, but you can always cut the tops off so you can haul the plants, it will grow new shoots next year.

You need to specify 'giant' bamboo as in a runner or a clumper. You will want a clumper unless you want to contain it. What specie were you looking into buying, do you remember the name of it? In the Houston area, Bambusa textilis will get the largest if you want a huge clumper.

darrin-

kentuck makes good points. However, since I suspect you are a neophyte with regard to bamboo, I just want to be sure you know that, if you top a bamboo culm, it will never regrow. The shoots that kentuck is referring to would be new growth from the ground up.

There's 2 bamboo plant specialists in Austin at least.

http://www.bamboo.org/BambooSourceList/ShowFilterSources.php?Sort=City&Country=All&state=TX&retail=-1&Button=GO

I say buy what you want and cut them down in size. As long as the culms still have branching and leaves they'll regrow next year just fine.

Or better still, rent a truck from Home Depot or phone a friend to help you. Just be sure to wrap leaves tightly to minimize leaf damage from driving down the road.