Thanks everyone. Ensete don't produce pups. Since they have never bloomed, they keep coming back year after year after year! Meyermike... After a killing frost, I chop them all off to a 4' stump, break my back fitting them into 15' gallon nursery pots (black plastic) and drag them across my lawn down the hill to my basement entrance (sliding glass doors). I chop them off to 4' stumps so that the plant and pot will fit in the door and be barely short enough to drag them on some plastic across my family room carpet, down the hall, and into an unlit, unheated food storage room. They keep growing for a couple of weeks but finally settle down and go dormant. I water them just once during the winter months. In April, I bring them out into the light and heat and they take off growing again! When the danger of frost has passed in mid May, I plant them outside in the same spots, year after year. They grow bigger with each passing year. As long as they don't flower (I don't expect they ever will) I don't see why they won't keep growing as many years as I want them to.

Rhizome is root mass below the surface. What you did was to cut a shoot that was just starting and will now die. In order to get a viable start of a clumping bamboo, you will have to get a decent size chunk of rhizome and, preferably, at least one fully developed culm. Unfortunately, clumpers have dense, woody rhizome systems. The last time I divided one, it took 1/2 hour with me pounding on the foot rest of a sharp, steel spade with a sledge to force it through the roots like a chisel. Some clumpers are less difficult...but you get the idea. You're not just going to be able to take a small piece and call it good. Unless you can get viable root mass, you're not going to get anywhere.

There is no hard and fast rule because different rzs and different cultivars respond differently. Some bloomed rzs won't produce increases at all. Most will produce some increases. Some will continue to produce additional increases after being separated from the first round of increases. But there are no guarantees one way or the other. My guess is that the slices you replanted yesterday probably won't survive. Theoretically if the mother rz is still viable, and if you cut her into chunks that contain growing points and enough mass to support both the original chunk and the development of new increases, and IF the cut surfaces don't rot, the replanted chunks *might* grow increases. However, cut surfaces are especially susceptible to invasion by erwinia bacteria that is endemic in most soils and will cause your slices to rot. That's why it is recommended that newly divided irises be allowed to dry and their cut wounds to scab over for several days before replanting. It'll be interesting to read the results of your experiment. You just never know what an iris will do. Laurie

Thanks for the helpful responses. Iris gal, on the Spring-planted rhizomes - this spring I planted quite a few varieties. All but one or two of them bloomed. I think the flowers were smaller, and shorter, than if they were planted the previous fall, but that's a guess. If they bloom next year, I'll have a comparison. One variety, Flavescens, sent up several flowers, but almost died out, leaving only one small fan. The ones that bloomed were: Florentina, Sans Souci, Quaker Lady, Iris germanica, Pallida Dalmatica, Shah Jehan, and Flavescens. The one that didn't bloom was Shannopin, which is interesting because that one has the strongest growth now. Maybe because it didn't bloom. Oh I forgot, also Mme Chereau and Mrs. Horace Darwin also bloomed. Mrs. H. Darwin developed rot but I trimmed off the rotted part and it recovered completely. I guess that makes 9 that bloomed. Memory not working so well :-) Chadining, I didn't know that was an urban legend! Most of my readings have recommended keeping the rhizomes exposed! I have had a couple of rhizomes that rotted out, all from new plantings. I speculated they were infected at their origin, because none of my established varieties rotted. It might have been injuries during planting, leading to infection. But I have been trying to plant them all with the rhizome tops fully exposed to the sun. It will be a relief if I don't have to worry about that Sherryaustin, I have mine in raised beds. Originally, when constructing the raised beds, I stapled chicken wire in place so the bottoms were completely lined with chicken wire. Something tunneled through anyway, or climbed over the sides and then tunneled from there. My newer raised beds have 1/2" mesh hardware cloth. We'll see if that helps.