Plants bearing the Bamboo Select® label are the result of a discriminating selection of elite mother plants and an optimal mix of the latest biotechnological propagation methods.

Starting with actual field trials, once a bamboo has proven itself as a superior clone, the long process of bringing that plant to the market begins. Our biotechnological propagation methods make Bamboo Select uniquely different, and absolutely superior to the old-way of traditional division. Bamboo Select is a guarantee for high quality, uniform, true-to-type plants.

Because our bamboos begin their life in a test-tube, they are clean and disease-free. From young plantlet to rooted plug, they receive a balanced diet to provide all their nutritional needs, and are full, robust plants upon arrival. Our quality is unparalleled.

With our ability to produce uniform, mass-produced plants in a matter of months, we can offer custom growing of large quantities of bamboos in a relatively short period of time for innovative landscape projects. Consider bamboo for roadside reclamation, erosion control, and phytoremediation projects, for example, and we can provide the best possible plants, thousands of perfect bamboo plants custom-grown.

Bamboo Select is proud to introduce a new world of plants, the very best select clones of bamboos propagated by tissue culture in the U.S. by exclusive licensed growers.

The unique allure of bamboo
Bamboo offers us what no other plant can offer. By bringing bamboo into our landscapes, we bring a plant with unparalleled abilities, such as:

• rapid growth
• vertical habit to screen and enclose, providing privacy and protecting us from the wind
• bamboo is drought and pollution tolerant; it is tough and durable
• its grove-creating rhizome root system, providing erosion control on slopes and clearings
• it creates a grove-creating woodland, attractive to many types of birds and other animals for nesting, enhancing wildlife habitat, and even creating intriguing playgrounds for children
• its' great ability to recycle carbon dioxide (12 tons/hectare), cleaning the air around us (35% more oxygen than equivalent stands of trees)
• bamboo has edible, tasteful shoots, providing a food source
• it is a true renewable resource, allowing local harvest for utilization for everyday needs, and has merit as an agroforestry crop and as a bio-engineering tool
• bamboo evokes the senses, as input for meditation, for healing, for refuge
• bamboos display beautiful ornamental characteristics, with culms of amazing colors, with enormous leaves or tiny delicate leaves

It could be said that bamboo is the most mysterious plant in the world. Once thought to be among the most primitive of grasses, it has now been found (by means of DNA testing) to be one of the most highly evolved. Flowering of some species occurs only once in a hundred years, while other species bloom annually or only sporadically. And, in terms of landscape use, bamboo has the reputation of the invasive beast, an uncontrollable nuisance, and yet the cold-hardiest of the bamboos do not run at all, but form dense clumps from well-behaved root systems. Bamboo evokes the essential color of green, and yet there exists a myriad of cultivars with yellow, gold, burgundy, blue and even black stems and leaves displaying intense variegation of gold and white.

The term bamboo refers to plants of the large subfamily of Bambusoideae within the family Gramineae (Poaceae). It embraces a considerable diversity of grasses, with representatives that grow only a few inches in height with vigorous rhizome root systems to giants of the tropics that can attain over 100 feet with trunk-like stems rising from great clumps. There are herbaceous bamboos living on the forest floor in the tropics, too, and cold temperate clumpers above timber line in the Himalayas. Bamboo is native on all continents around the world except Europe and Antarctica. Surprisingly, the widest diversity of bamboos exists in Central and South America, however most people are first introduced to bamboo through Asian arts and gardens. Bamboo has been an ornamental gem in man-made gardens throughout England and Europe since the Victorian times.

The allure of bamboo is undeniable. With proper site selection and research into the species growth characteristics and requirements, there is a place for bamboo in the landscape around the United States. Move aside the mystique and you will find a very compatible plant with few maintenance concerns, and a plant with a lot of appeal to the senses. Afterall, bamboo is just another ornamental grass - but one with a more human connection.

The Role of Biotechnology
The ultimate goal of Bamboo Select® is to provide high quality plants at affordable prices.

To accomplish this goal, we have fine-tuned the most successful methods of bamboo micropropagation. Micropropagation is a method using tissue culture technology, to produce large quantities of plants in a very short time.

Plants are grown in growth chambers under controlled environmental conditions. On just one shelf area in a conditioned growth room, 2000 plants can be grown at one time.

Starting from only a few nodal pieces, within a period of 4-8 months thousands of new plants can be produced. These plants are multiplied every 3-5 weeks and yield 3-6 new plants each. This is an excellent method to propagate new introductions or new selections very rapidly. Moreover, micropropagated plants are small but vigorous growers, free from diseases or pests.

The selection of motherplants to be micropropagated is a critical process. Because micropropagation via axillary branching mimics the natural growth of bamboo, the propagated plants are genetically identical to the mother plant. Therefore a lot of time and energy is used to select elite genotypes. The choice of inferior plants may cause a considerable loss of profit in wholesale nursery production and in the landscape. In the selection of elite clones, DNA- fingerprinting techniques are used, both to unequivocally identify genotypes, and to improve selection procedures for elite genotypes.

The leading position of Bamboo Select® is the result on the one hand, of a mix of fundamental and applied research, and of the integration of micropropagation in the plant production chain on the other. Fundamental research on bamboo, including genetic and physiological research, is an important strategy, and Bamboo Select® has an important role to play in this field.