#Black Bamboo
Richard- Sorry for being do dense about retrieving your message, but I got
it the second time. About sources. I sell it (Burt Associates, PO Box
719, Westford, MA 01886 (508) 692 3240), and locally a very reliable
hobbyist nursery is David C. Andrews, PO Box 10358, Oxon, MD 20750. Don't
know whether he has P. nigra for sale. A widely touted clone of P. nigra
is called 'Hale'. Since it is less upright than the standard nigra, you
should try to stay away from it. If that is all you can get, take it.
Black bamboo is hard to find.
You should experience no trouble in growing it – I grew it in Zone 5. Keep
it well watered the first year, and fertilize very little. Thereafter it
should take care of itself, responding to fertilizer (high nitrogen) if you
care to bring it along quickly. I'd suggest, particularly if you have any
sort of lighting that you remove the lower branches from the culms, and
thin the grove from time to time so that you can see into the grove. Even
if you are growing a screen, the culms are so attractive that the eye stops
at the grove and does not go beyond. Unpruned, you get a shrubby effect
and you might as well grow privet. But I'm a nut on pruning – it brings
out the Bambuslichkeit in bamboo. First German word I have ever coined.
Good luck – AlbertI