Family: Poaceae

Bambusa vulgaris, commonly known as common bamboo or golden bamboo, is one of the most widely grown bamboo species in the world. With its tall, fast-growing culms and striking yellow or green stems, it’s often planted for landscaping, screens, and windbreaks. This clumping bamboo prefers warm, humid climates and can grow quickly once established, creating dense stands that provide shade and visual interest. Its versatility has made it popular in gardens, farms, and roadside plantings across the tropics and subtropics.

However, Bambusa vulgaris can become a management challenge in Hawaiʻi. Although it forms clumps rather than spreading by runners, the clumps can expand aggressively, sending up large numbers of shoots that are difficult to contain. Escaped plantings can overtake stream corridors and disturbed areas, outcompeting native plants and altering local habitats. Because of its vigorous growth and the dense thickets it forms, this species should be planted carefully—well away from natural areas—and maintained regularly to prevent unwanted spread. Plant Pono encourages gardeners to consider lower-risk bamboo alternatives when possible

High Risk Traits:

• Elevation range exceeds 1000 m, demonstrating environmental versatility
  
• Thrives in tropical climates
  
• Naturalized elsewhere (although no evidence from Hawaiian Islands)
  
• Regarded as an environmental weed elsewhere
  
• Potentially allelopathic
  
• Other Bambusa species have become invasive
  
• Toxic if eaten by horses
  
• Tolerates many soil types
  
• Forms dense, monospecific stands
  
• Reproduces vegetatively by rhizomes and fragments
  
• Water can move rhizome fragments
  
• Able to be pollarded and can resprout after cutting

Low Risk Traits:

• Not naturalized in the Hawaiian Islands despite widespread cultivation
  
• Unarmed (no spines, thorns, or burrs)
  
• Palatable to animals (despite toxicity to horses)
  
• Ornamental
  
• Not known to produce seeds
  
• As a sympodial bamboo, spreads more slowly than monopodial (runner) bamboos
  
• Reaches maturity in 80+ years (and does not produce seeds)
  
• Lack of seed production limits long-distance dispersal
  
• Herbicides may provide effective control