Dendrocalamus copelandii – Phai man mu (Pig Fat Bamboo)

Description

The Thai name Phai man mu (Pig Fat Bamboo) alludes to the copious amount of wax covering the internodes of new shoots and young culms.
Eye-catching appearance in the forest or in a garden.
A large, elegant, tufted bamboo. Culms up to 76′ tall, 7-8″ in diameter at the base. Nodes barely prominent with long internodes.
Cultivated for edible shoots.
New import.
We continue to have high hopes for this beautiful bamboo. Our initial test specimen started strong but its rhizome was partially damaged by hurricane Irma in 2017, especially by standing water in a particularly slow-draining area of our test field. To save it, we relocated it to a different field in 2018. The bamboo species will be fine but it had a setback that will delay propagation.
Update: Our mature field specimen is spectacular but we STILL have produced no propagules (well, we have one baby but our employees have become attached to it and are keeping it hidden).  The Feb/2026 fluke-freeze killed a handful of weakly-rooted branch cuttings, so we started over in March.  Hopefully, we have new propagules by the end of summer…

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