Garden Designers & Landscape Gardeners
Garden Buildings in South & East England

Gorgeous pictures above and below left courtesy of emagen on flickr.com see their link on our Resources Page
Right - photo courtesy of Helen Fickling
Phyllostachys nigra
This species is an important part of the Phyllostachys genus' range of coloured and patterned culms which can be mottled or striped. Stripes can occur randomly on the culm or only in the sulcus (groove on each internode). Culms can be almost any shade of green and many shades of yellow or amber, dark purple, brown and even red when they are young shoots. The young culms of P. nigra are green when they first emerge and become mottled with brown patches which slowly join up and darken. There are many different forms of P.nigra, just to make things confusing, and not all of them turn completely black. The culms are definitely the main attraction with this bamboo as the leaves are a little non descript being a dull mid green, it can also be a little temperamental - suddenly developing yellow leaves and many thin juvenile culms on mature clumps. We have grown many clumps that have stayed looking healthy and others which for no obvious reason never look totally happy.

Left - a clump of P. nigra as most commonly seen - without cleaning and thinning as in the pervious photo set, where the thin culms and lower side branches have been removed. This bamboo seems to produce lots of thin juvenile culms even after the clump has reached maturity, many of these 'whip like' culms have a short life span and die, you can see a few here on the right. They make dense thickets of very hard and brittle grey twigs that are a hazard to eyes if they whiplash back when you have the task of pruning them out, which involves pushing your way in, head first into the clump. The lower side branches also die back if they are shaded out by the clump's postion or dense growth above, adding to the thicket effect. This species looks much better if kept 'clean' allowing you to get into the clump and showing off its black culms better.
This photo courtesy of Noah Bell and Sheewash Bamboo nursery who are copyright holders, see their link on our resources page.  
Right - a close up shot of the tip of a P. nigra shoot.
This photo courtesy of needmorebamboo.com copyright holders, see their link on our resources page