Running bamboo is notoriously fast spreading and difficult to remove. What keeps its population balanced in the wild, and prevents it from crowding out the competition? I tried googling, but was inundated with gardening advice, horror stories, and assault / offensive gardening (some of the latter two presumably covering the same incident from both sides). My google-fu failed, I couldn’t really find any info about natural population controls of running bamboo in the thicket of tall tales and gardening advice.
Well it doesn’t take over my yard because I got it all removed by a guy with a backhoe because it scared me. I like the way it looks but want some clumping bamboo not running bamboo, which had taken over the yard here when we bought our house. There’s still a little in one corner I just aggressively manage it. Comes over from the neighbors so it’s unavoidable.
There are bamboo forests, aren’t there? I’m sure that in its natural habitat it does have competition. Like kudzu. It’s just invasive here.