Selective thinning for branch-free bamboo poles

[Mark Mortimer]

Hi folks,
I have the chance to manage a grove of Phyllostachys nigra Henonis. It belongs to an old guy who lives down the road, and he doesn't really care what happens to it. (although he has taken to charging me to remove culms). It's about 20 meters square, and never been managed. Some of the culms are about 8cm diameter. But as in any natural grove, there's all sorts in there, old dead stuff, old live stuff but arched and skinny from the original grove edge etc. I'm slowly removing all this stuff and clearing it. I'm leaving the largest culms in a spaced out open manner.
So that leaves quite a lot of light coming in from the top, which is the point I guess, to force the new shoots to grow straight. But my question is this: if there is that much light, surely the new shoots will branch out to fill the space, causing branching quite far down the culm. At present the more recent culms, till about six years old, have no branches for about 5 or 6 meters, which is ideal. How can I stop the culms from branching low down?
Cheers, Mark

[Mark Meckes]

Hi Mark,
Here's some thoughts on this subject...
Selective thinning allows more sunlight into a grove, which in turn produces healthier leaves and more side-branching, which in time creates more shade, resulting in higher branching of new culms in the following years.

However selective thinning should commence in the early stages of a groves' development., otherwise thinning an overcrowded grove can result in floppy culms that can't stand upright on their own.
Most groves that I've dealt with were over-crowded to begin with, and required a period of several years to reach a balanced equilibrium.
Mark
...a never-ending on-going process