Otatea Species, Mexican Weeping Bamboo, Mexican Woody Bamboo

2022 and the one i have in the ground is blooming. I also have a small one in a pot which i bring inside if it falls below 25 F and it i...Read Mores NOT blooming.

I expect the blooming plant to die but im not going to dig it up until it does. Supposedly bamboo species bloom within a year or two no matter where in the world it is grown. If my potted bamboo blooms next year i guess i will know that is true.

I have collected seed and will try to start some baby plants. I grow 6 species of bamboo but this one is my favorite even tho i have to cover it during hard freezes so i dont want to be without one.

Beautiful plant but slow to establish and grow here in cool San Francisco. Ours has been in the ground for 2 1/2 years and not a single n...Read Moreew culm. But the ones that came with the nursery plant look healthy, so we are optimistic that growth will come eventually. This is in sandy, well draining soil and not too much water. It provides lovely motion in its breezy location and is a great complement to the Chamadorea plumosa midway across the yard.

I live on the border between zone 8a and 8b so I'm taking a chance growing his beautiful bamboo. I have lost one during winter several y...Read Moreears ago and I am now taking steps to keep that from happening again.

I have two plants both planted near the south side of my house. This past winter we had two nights where it dropped down to 15 and I wrapped the plant with Christmas lights - the old kind that have a normal bulb that put out a small bit of heat. Next I wrapped the entire plant with De Witte plant wrap. This is a heavier duty wrap than what you will find at a big box store and an entire roll that will last years can b ordered from Amazon. The 'Planket' covers offered at big box stores will rip easily causing you to buy new ones.

I cut off the tallest culms so I would not have to wrap something 12 feet tall.
During these cold nights I turned on the Christmas lights and hoped for the best. I also watered the soil around the plant so the soil would be wet and humid instead of dry.

Both plants made it through with a minimum of damaged leaves and upper parts of some culms. This spring it put up numerous new culms. I hope I will get a few mild winters in a row so I can see how tall it will get without having to cut it and bind it together with bungee cords and do the Christmas tree light wrap. As long as it stays above,20 Fahrenheit I do not bother to give it any protection.

Loved having this bamboo. It served as a nice barrier between our kitchen eating area and the street. Would love to be able to put it i...Read Moren our yard in Maryland, but it appears that the winters are too cold for it.

We purchased a house in Long Beach, CA in 1975 where the Mexican Weeping Bamboo was already established. The previous owner had taken a root cutting from the plant at The Huntington - before it had been released to nurseries to sell - and planted it in the yard. I just recently learned the proper name - he called it feather grass.

One thing I have never seen in print, is that the plant dies out world wide and reseeds itself periodically. I am not sure of how long a period it is, but it did do so around 1990. (in 1975 it was a large mature clump. We did not live in the house in the 80's (spouse's work kept up moving around) so not sure if it re-seeded during that time frame. We came back in 1990 to find it had died out and was just coming back. (The previous owner came by in the time period and confirmed that it had died out world-wide.) It did not re-seed from 1990 to 2012. I have never gotten to see any flowers.

We have had some trouble propagating the plant, perhaps because of all the shade in our yard. We sold the house a year ago, and moved to Maryland; along with two specimens of the plant in pots. I have nursed them along through the winter in my sunroom and discovered that the roots do not like to be deeply buried pots - need to be near the surface. In the ground in CA, the roots stayed just below the surface of the soil. It also likes to dry out between waterings; but too dry, the leaves curl and the plant droops.