This post bamboo is a letter to my friend, if you would like to see how much I love plants.
walk
Dear friend, I went for a little walk this morning and looked at the plant I thought was bamboo. My phone told me that yes, it is bamboo–golden bamboo, the vulgaris. Bambusa vulgaris. Looks pretty. I wanted to tell you.
I have history with bamboo, from when I was a child.
Then I asked Ming about the plant that looks like bamboo sometimes, and Ming said arundo. When I look up arundo, I find arundo donax. Highly invasive, not providing good food or habitat, extra flammable in the summer… Arundo is doing no good in California at least, where I first saw it infesting the permaculture farm Ming and I lived at for a month in 2022 in Ojai, California. It was all over the place, being a pain.
Looking at the picture, I wondered if arundo is related to pampas grass. They have that plume-ish feathery flowering on top. Not sure, but when someone is conceited, it’s pompous.
Also I wanted to tell you that the plant we saw encroaching on the sidewalk with the green flowers is euphorbia charcias.
Wikipedia says it can endure drought and be ok with salt. A common name is Mediterranean spurge.
Ming doesn’t like euphorbia much. He says the sap is toxic and can lead to blindness if eyes get the sap in them and go untreated. Wow, it’s so painful if people get it in their eyes, they puke.
dudleya
The plant I told you is my historic favorite plant is dudleya, common name live forever. Some nice ones are chalk dudleya and antonyi. Dudleya brittonii is big and easy to love.
This is the special book of dudleya info and delightful photos I mentioned to you as plant pooorn: Dudleya and Hasseanthus Handbook by Paul H. Thomson published 1993. I guess this book is hard to find,
It’s interesting we saw the Canary island ivy because the Canary Islands are on my mind a lot. My ancestors on my mom’s side stopped by those islands for a while, when they left Spain and before they went to New Mexico. Some Jews fleeing the inquisition did that.
The ivy is native to the Canary Islands. The berries are poisonous to mammals, or maybe the whole plant.
thank you
Thank you for slow plant walking with me. I enjoy learning with you and hope we look at bamboo again someday, together. You are wonderful to see the world with.
This is an art I saw in an alley in Eugene last week.
I love you, Laura-Marie
