QUINDEMBO BAMBOO NURSERY PHOTO
Quindembo Bamboo Nursery has been instrumental in importing exotic bamboo, such as the bambusa lako (timor black ) above, highly prized for its wood. Check the nursery's Web site at www.bamboonursery.com for ordering information.
Taking stalk
A class will detail 'good'
and 'bad' bamboo
It's a good thing for bamboo enthusiasts that Elsie Horikawa's biological father's last name was Takenaka. This contributes to her affinity with bamboo, she said, partly because "'take' means bamboo and 'naka' means 'inside' in Japanese." It translates as "inside of the bamboo," and to get there has become a goal of hers.
Everything bamboo
Norman Bezona, professor emeritus, will teach a class on bamboo, including how to select the right type for your own site, how to propagate and more.When: 9:30 to 11:30 a.m., June 14
Where: Lyon Arboretum, 3860 Manoa Road
Cost: $20 ($18 for members)
Call: 988-0456 for more information
She hopes her effort to gain more information about the plants will result in an interest that spreads as rapidly as the variety of the plant most people are wary of.
"Maybe this will dispel the myth," she said, that bamboos are uncontrollable. "There are about 1,800 or more types, and not all of them are runners" -- meaning not all will blanket the yard until it resembles the hillside of a Tantalus hiking trail dense with hollow poles and sharp-edged leaves.
To learn to distinguish "good" bamboo from "bad," take in the Lyon Arboretum's class June 14.
But be aware, those distinctions are a man-made creation. Class instructor Norm Bezona insists there is no such thing as bad bamboo.
"My grandma always used to say that God didn't create anything that was bad; it's only the way we perceive or mismanage it that makes it bad," said Bezona, who lives in cloud forest level on Mount Hualalai, a dormant volcano on the Big Island.
Horikawa tapped her old friend Bezona after discovering that Lyon Arboretum, which offers classes regularly on a variety of topics, didn't have bamboo on its agenda, mostly because they didn't know anyone qualified to teach about it.
Bezona managed to find time to head this class between helping with environmental projects in Africa and Vanuatu.
QUINDEMBO BAMBOO NURSERY PHOTO
Quindembo Bamboo Nursery has been instrumental in importing exotic bamboo, such as the bambusa lako (timor black ) above, highly prized for its wood. Check the nursery's Web site at www.bamboonursery.com for ordering information.
"People are starting to realize how they've wasted and polluted their environment," he said of his work. The former agricultural extension agent opted for early retirement but continues to be involved with reforestation efforts using mixed vegetation, including bamboo.
"Forty percent of that is planting bamboo. It gives a renewable resource to the community that they can use."
The bamboo can be used in flooring, furniture, veneers, medicine, food and more.
"Ply bamboo is stronger than regular plywood," Bezona said. "And as a food, dieters limited to 1,000 or so calories a day can incorporate bamboo into their diet; it helps absorb more of the vitamins in those calories."
The plant is also a quick-growing, perpetual resource that can be harvested within five years, and again every year after that, unlike redwoods or koa, where the wait for maturity is about 50 years.
Yet bamboo continues to be scarce and expensive in garden shops, running into the three-digit price range because of strict and rigorous quarantine codes and procedures developed to protect agriculture here from disease.
The rules for classification of grass are especially strict, he said, and bamboo is considered to be a grass.
QUINDEMBO BAMBOO NURSERY PHOTO
Bambusa vulgaris vittata, also known as the Giant green-stripe bamboo, is common in Hawaii, growing to heights of up to 50 feet. Bamboo is scarcely found in garden shops here because of strict quarantine codes. The Quindembo Bamboo Nursery Web site at www.bamboonursery.com has information on this and other bamboo.
"The plants have to be put in quarantine for one year. It can put the plants at risk," he said, because quarantine conditions are far from ideal.
"Quindembo Nursery did more for making their bamboo a footprint in Hawaii than anyone else." The company set up a quarantine operation enabling them to import several species. "If not for them we wouldn't be talking about these elite type of bamboo; they wouldn't be here, they'd be somewhere else."
Bezona himself is on the lookout for an elite hitam black bamboo, a clumping type of plant which grows up to 100 feet tall, costs $450 for a 3-gallon pot and is beautiful as furniture wood.
It would make an awesome Father's Day gift, according to Bezona, whose class happens to fall the day before, "except it's so rare you have to be on a list to get it and put down $200 to reserve it."
The most common type of bamboo in Hawaii is the green stripe bamboo, which grows to 50 feet tall and does not have elite status, although it is pretty.
Most people, however, are more familiar with the running bamboo in the phyllotachys family. Bezona, abiding by his grandmother's wise words, has difficulty calling it invasive. "It could be invasive if not used in the right place."
Introduced to Hawaii mostly for erosion control, he said, it's used where there are banks and rockslides, one reason they were planted in Tantalus.
For a medium-size garden, he suggests avoiding the runners and look for clumpers like Siamese monastery bamboo or Mexican weeping bamboo, which grows 20 to 25 feet tall.
He also recommends reading "Bamboo World," by Victor Cusack, and "Book of Bamboo," by David Farrelly. But as someone who enjoys sharing his knowledge, what he recommends most is signing up for his class.
"I'm a teacher; it's what I love to do."
Though Horikawa has already learned much from Bezona, she's looking forward to the class she spearheaded and views the plant itself as an example in tough times.
"I like the fact that the plant bends with the wind. That's how one should be when adversity strikes -- don't let it break you."
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