The fountain bamboo – Fargesia nitida – blooms once every hundred years, give or take a year or ten. It is quite an enchanting event – the way the little blooms dangle from their canes, dancing with the slightest breeze – but a rather mournful one: after flowering, the plant dies. Most of the Fargesia plants that had been dispersed around the world were propagated through division, meaning the vast majority of fountain bamboo would flower in one mass event, then experience a mass die-off. That blooming explosion happened about seven or eight years ago, which affected the two specimens I’d been cultivating since we first moved into our home.
I purchased and planted them years before everyone realized the blooming cycle was at hand, and for the past few years nurseries would not guarantee survival of Fargesia species because some still hadn’t bloomed. Nurseries are just now coming into supplies of seeded plants from the new generation of Fargesia nitida, and are once again guaranteeing their survival since they aren’t due to bloom for another hundred years.
I’ve been waiting an extra couple of years because when you’re talking about a century of time, you don’t give or take a day. As magnificent as their blooming was – how often do you get to witness a once-a-century flowering event in your own backyard?! – it was heartbreaking as well. I’d grown to love our two fountain bamboos, thrilled at the way they started off so slowly, but soon sent up their name-sake fountain form when coddled with a bit of manure and water during dry spells. They had just begun to develop their characteristic arching form, and outside the bedroom window the canes curved and waved in the wind like the backdrop to some Japanese woodblock.
The occasion of their blooming caught me off-guard.
I felt the sorrow before I could feel the excitement.
The celebration of a luxury of rarity paled to the inevitable loss, and I felt more sadness than elation at the magical sight of their blooms. I was in a different mindset then. I took such things to heart, lamenting the loss and reveling in the regret that I hadn’t appreciated our two Fargesia plants while they were alive. Only near the end did I inhabit the moment, giving in to the wonder of what I was fortunate to witness.
A couple of days ago, four new fountain bamboo plants arrived on our front step. They come from the new generation of Fargesia nitida, and the nursery assures me if there are any blooming issues or die -off they will replace them. We should have about another century before they bloom again. Andy mentioned that we won’t be here to see it, and there was nothing macabre or sad about it – it was the simple truth. Someone once said, “Society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in.”
With that in mind, I tucked the four new bamboo plants into their chosen locations around the yard, amply amending the soil with the manure they love so much, and watering them in well to give them the best possible start. A new generation had been put to bed for the first night in their new home.
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