A few weeks ago I noticed this new shoot popping up from the same bamboo cluster I had posted about the growth rate before:

This is the first actual bamboo shoot coming up from the ground that we’ve seen from our new plants. The earlier measurements I was taking were from branches coming off of the original plant we stuck in the ground. You can see that its tip is about 30cm from the ground on this picture (from June 20th). This new shoot is quite a bit fatter than the old branches too. It turns out it was ready for some serious growth.

Today, after 2 weeks, I took this picture:

That shoot grew into the tall bamboo stalk towering over everything else. (You can also see a new shoot that grew up just to the right of it.) I measured it at 302cm today. That’s about 3 meters in 2 weeks! More precisely, it comes out to about 19.4 centimeters of growth per day when averaged over the past 2 weeks. That’s a fast growing plant.