culms

The shoots start to form in the winter about one meter away from mature culms.

Changing the harvest schedule will not increase the availability of bamboo, since already all new culms are harvest, just after they become four years old - the system is steady state.

Exactly, and during years two and three the culms are adding energy back into the rhizome/root system enabling future shoots to emerge.

This argues that the dead culms create a large fuel load, and also a large target for lightning strikes, increasing the likelihood of wildfire.

Well, edible bananas don't have seeds, you have to excavate and extract, prepare, and then bury (plant) culms to spread them.

So yes, it was definitely deliberate, people carried banana culms around with them in order to plant them as they traveled from island to island.

Bamboo that belong to the leptomorph rhizome group can grow many feet over a growing season, and have buds along their length that will grow into new rhizomes or culms (shoots).

Unlike all trees, individual bamboo stems, or culms, emerge from the ground at their full diameter and grow to their full height in a single growing season of three to four months.

We moved, and despite being very close to our old house, have an order of magnitude fewer mosquitos.) Water collects in the broken culms, which can be very deep, and doesn't go away because they remain shaded.

Over the next 2-5 years depending on species, fungus and mould begin to form on the outside of the culm, eventually penetrating and overcoming the culm so that by around 5 - 8 years depending on species and climate the culms begin to collapse and decay.