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Monday, March 14, 2016

A last look

It's time to chop down my groundcover and "shrub" bamboos, as they will soon be pushing out new growth. Some are brown, some are still green but a bit tired looking, but all will be wonderful when the foliage refreshes.


Unfortunately, this means that I'm entering the period of least attractiveness for the bamboos. This hurts the most with the Sasa veitchii bamboo whose leaf margins "burst" each winter giving the foliage a beautiful variegated look. So this is one last look at the S. veitchii before it gets clipped.


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It's just so pretty this year, probably because the mild winter preserved most of the green portions of the leaves:


It is such a nice contrast to the all-green bamboos:


I mean, look at that foliage!


I always hate cutting this down. The new growth is straight green until cold weather brings this look back again in the fall.


One other color combination that will soon (in an hour or two after posting this) disappear:


The Pleioblastus viridistriatus bamboo (light brown, in the lower left corner), the dark green of the Sasaella bitchuensis bamboo (or is it Sasa tsuboiana? I always forget which one I planted here. Yes, it's the tsuboiana as shown in this post), then the bright green of the new growth of the Euonymous -- which will soon be pruned away. Pruned by me I mean -- the deer prune it all winter long. The Japanese maple contributes some browns as well -- not sure why it didn't drop all of its leaves this year.)


So that's a last look at some pretty bamboo colors, as they'll be gone tomorrow.

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3 comments:

  1. Love that Sasa veitchii. The brown margins look like variegation.

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  2. So pretty! It's great how winter can make plants look so differently.

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  3. Gerhard: It's such a "normal" bamboo for most of the year, then in autumn it turns special!

    Renee: I agree! I don't understand gardeners who clean up everything before winter -- they're missing out on months of beauty!

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