Having the invasive bamboo on your property could lead to a fine from the city. (Devan Ridgway/WTIU)
Yellow groove bamboo isn’t native to Bloomington, and, in 2020, the city began taking steps to eradicate it.
That’s when it was added to the city’s list of invasive species. And residents could be fined for failing to properly maintain it or even charged for the removal of it.
Karen Cherrington had no idea. She owns two houses next to each other on West Sixth Street.
The yard of the house she lives in doesn’t have yellow groove bamboo on it, but the other one does. Tall strands of it provide a buffer to the alleys that border the property to the south and west.
“I like the privacy,” the 74-year-old Cherrington said. “The birds love it. It stays green in the winter. It gives off more oxygen than oak trees. It helps with the pollutants from Kirkwood and Adams. It’s just a protector.”
But now, it’s an invasive species and subject to regulation in Bloomington.
“It has never invaded anybody’s yard, not even mine, and I’m right next door,” Cherrington said. “I maintain it, so it doesn’t. I just want it on the edges; I need the privacy.”
But maintaining the bamboo, which Cherrington has been doing for years, is not enough. Municipal Code 6.06.050 says that “weeds, grass or noxious plants” cannot grow higher than eight inches. Yellow grooved bamboo can grow to be 20-25 feet.
The reason the yellow groove bamboo is an issue is that its rhizomes – or underground stem system – grows horizontally, allowing it to quickly spread under fences and across property lines.
“The result is it forms a very, very dense thicket, so dense that you can’t walk through it,” said Ellen Jacquart, the president of the Indiana Native Plant Society and chair of Monroe County–Identify and Reduce Invasive Species (MC-IRIS).
“Just about nothing stops it short of cement. So, when you do plant it, you’re really planting it for all of your neighbors and surrounding properties, because it keeps moving.”
Jacquart understands the desire for residents to keep their bamboo, but she says the damage it causes outweighs the benefit.
“I can tell you some wonderful things about poison ivy,” she said. “But what you have to do is weigh the pro cons. And, in this case, the very, very little benefit that bamboo provides is far outweighed by the damage it does to people who inherit such plantings.”
“There’s also some health issues. Because of the density, you get groupings of birds, small mammals and so on, and the amount of feces builds up and you can end up getting incidences of histoplasmosis disease that is carried by feces.”
There’s also the danger of the bamboo growing into power lines and sparking a fire. That happened recently to a garage on West Wiley Street.
So late in 2019, an amendment to what would be the 2020 UDO added yellow grooved bamboo to the list of banned plants.
“We’re not the only community with a bamboo eradication, you know, ordinance,” said Brent Pierce, the assistant director of the Housing and Neighborhood Development department, which enforces the ordinance. “There are others in Indiana and certainly others across the country that are forced to deal with the problem.”
The bamboo was on Cherrington’s property when she bought it. She didn’t know it had been listed as an invasive species until she received her first of several citations last July. After back-to-back fines a week apart in May totaling $150, Cherrington appealed her case to the Bloomington Department of Public Works.
“I really thought they’d let me grandfather it,” she said. “It just doesn’t seem right. They pass an ordinance and then they don’t tell people, and then they don’t have any funds or any help to get rid of it.”
But, thanks in part to Cherrington’s appeal, HAND amended how its invasive species policy deals with yellow grooved bamboo.
“I think the point’s been made that bamboo is just different; it’s more difficult to deal with,” Pierce said. “And, so it was important for us, because we’re required by the ordinance to enforce it, what’s the most sensible way to do it?”
The invasive species code calls for citation with a warning or a fine of $50 on the first violation. The fines increase with each subsequent violation. If the city has to remove the plants, the costs are added to your property tax.
For the yellow groove bamboo, the policy now calls for a warning, followed by a 90-day window to show progress, such as a measurable decrease of bamboo. If none is shown, the fines will begin.
Pierce said HAND is working with the city on public awareness of the policy change.
With the policy change, the parks board threw out Cherrington’s previous citations and fines.
Cherrington is making some progress. She has had truckloads of bamboo removed from the property and is keeping that area mowed. She’s also laid plastic to keep the bamboo from growing, but still has the thicket bordering the property.
She said it would cost thousands to completely eradicate the bamboo.
But Jacquart called that the “nuclear option.” She said one way to control the bamboo is to cut it every week or two, when the bamboo sprouts anew.
“If you can commit to simply cutting down all the shoots as they pop up over and over, the roots will run out of energy and the plant will die,” Jacquart said. “That is labor intensive, but it’s not going to be the expense of having roots removed.”
Cherrington doesn’t want to remove her bamboo and she still hopes to keep the stand along the edge of the property as a privacy fence.
“I of course do not want to get fined,” she said. “And I also want to keep some of my privacy. And I hope that the city understands that, and especially since mine is not a problem for anybody else.”
