Ahmed Salim has lived in High Point since 2006. Ever since he moved to the city, he’s noticed an oddly large presence of a plant that is thousands of miles away from its native, tropical home — bamboo.
“There's a large thicket within walking distance of where I live. And then I've also noticed that in people's backyards, especially in the older neighborhoods, they have bamboo," Salim said. "I go to somebody's house, go out back and there's a bunch of bamboo. So the question is, why is there so much bamboo in High Point?”
For this edition of Carolina Curious, WFDD’s Amy Diaz spoke with Margaret Fields, with the North Carolina chapter of the Nature Conservancy, to find the answer.
Landscaping trends
It makes sense that Salim is bewildered by the amount of bamboo in High Point. The plant is mostly native to Asia, so how did it get all the way to North Carolina?
Fields says bamboo was introduced to the United States over a long period of time, largely for commercial and decorative purposes. And it’s actually found all over the country.
“In the 20th century, there got to be a lot more plants being imported for use in people's landscaping. I had a bamboo ... in my yard that was planted there in the '50s," Fields said. "So I feel like there are eras where it's in style to plant something. Like in the 80s, planting Bradford Pears and then figuring out over time, ‘This is a tree that doesn't last. And it also seeds out into the woods.' You can see in landscaping, kind of trends like that. And I think of bamboo as a '50s trend.”
That might explain why Salim notices so much bamboo in the historic neighborhoods. But bamboo doesn’t just stay where it’s planted. Fields says it's an invasive species, and spreads incredibly quickly.
Invasive species
“If they're not in a container, they will send out runners, send out rhizomes, and they can grow and spread 15 feet a year if we have a rainy summer," Fields said. "And so people will plant these as a screen between them and their neighbor or them and the busy road, and if they don't put in a root barrier that goes down at least 18 inches, then the bamboo will just keep spreading.”
It also outcompetes the other native plants, which displaces them. And once it starts spreading, Fields says it’s really hard to stop.
“You have to basically devote a lot of resources to cutting it down, getting it to a mowable stage, where you can mow it and you can treat it with chemical but you mainly need to starve it of that sunlight," Fields said. "And so it eventually will die, but that is years of managing it and chopping it and mowing it. It is doable. But it takes a commitment beyond just getting a landscaping crew to go out once and chop it down.”
Finding a native alternative
Fields deals with invasive species issues as part of her job with The Nature Conservancy. She’s also on the board of the North Carolina Invasive Plant Council.
She says people should research the plants they’re interested in buying before sticking them in the ground and potentially making an invasive species problem worse.
“You know, we've got the legacy of things like English ivy and things that are still sold in nurseries, and now we have them in the woods," Fields said. "So it's good to educate yourself about what you want in the yard and seek out knowledgeable folks to get the plants from.”
But if you like the look of bamboo, Fields says there’s a native option. It's called giant cane, or river cane.
This variety forms clumps, and spreads less vigorously, so it won’t displace all the other native plants North Carolina has to offer.
