Madake and Hachiku: How to Tell Japan's Two Everyday Bamboos Apart
Outside Japan, most people know these two bamboos from nursery labels. Phyllostachys bambusoides is sold as timber bamboo. Phyllostachys nigra var. henonis is sold as Henon bamboo. In Japan they are madake and hachiku, two of the three big bamboos that people have lived with for centuries, together with moso.
We are a small tree care and landscape business in Mie Prefecture, central Japan. Bamboo groves are part of our everyday work, and in Mie moso, madake and hachiku sometimes grow in the same grove. This page is about how we tell madake and hachiku apart, and what each one has been used for.
First, count the rings at the node
Look at a node, the joint on the stem. Japan's Forestry Agency explains that moso has one ring at each node, while madake and hachiku both have two. So if you see two rings, you are looking at madake or hachiku, not moso.
To go further, you need the fallen sheaths and the colour of a young stem.
The sheath tells you most
As a bamboo shoot grows, it drops the papery sheaths that wrapped it. They lie on the ground under the grove from early summer.
Madake sheaths are hairless and marked with large black-brown spots. The Forestry Agency notes that because the sheath is clean and smooth, people in Japan have used it to wrap food.
Hachiku sheaths have no black spots. The plant guide Mikawa no Shokubutsu Kansatsu describes them as pale pinkish brown. A young hachiku stem also looks whitish green, because of a waxy coating, while young madake is a deeper, glossier green.
Two sizes, two jobs
The Forestry Agency gives madake as a large bamboo up to about 15 centimetres across and 20 metres tall. Its internodes are long and its wall is thin, and it is springy and strong. It has been used in buildings and in bamboo crafts.
Hachiku is a little smaller, about 3 to 10 centimetres across and around 15 metres tall. Its wood splits cleanly into very fine strips. For that reason, the Forestry Agency notes, it is used for tea ceremony tools such as the chasen, the whisk that whips matcha into foam.
Madake has the brighter colour and is often used for bamboo fences. Hachiku is paler and softer in tone, and we find it just as beautiful.
The bitter bamboo and the sweet one
Madake can be written with the kanji for bitter bamboo. The Forestry Agency explains that its shoots are thought of as bitter, so they rarely appear in shops. The Mikawa guide adds that they are bitter right after they emerge, but can be eaten if you pick them a little later.
Hachiku shoots are known for their gentle taste, though they are also rarely sold. In the Mikawa area of central Japan, the guide gives hachiku shoots as appearing from March to May and madake shoots in June. Moso comes first of all in spring. If you know which bamboo grows near you, you know when to look for shoots.
A bamboo that flowers once in about 120 years
Bamboo rarely flowers. Japan's Forestry and Forest Products Research Institute explains that hachiku flowers over wide areas at the same time, roughly once every 120 years, and then the stems die. The last such period was in the late Meiji era, around the start of the twentieth century.
That time has come again. The institute's researchers studied five hachiku groves that flowered in 2017, from Shikoku to the Kanto region. About 60 percent of the nitrogen and phosphorus above ground had gone into the flowers. Yet they found no ripe seeds. What came back were small stems about a metre tall, rising from rhizomes that had survived.
When we last wrote about this, the hachiku grove we look after had not flowered. We keep watching it.
Madake and the light bulb
Madake has a famous connection with the United States. Thomas Edison was looking for a filament that would let an electric bulb burn for a long time. Iwashimizu Hachimangu, a shrine in Yawata near Kyoto, tells the story that he tried the bamboo ribs of a Japanese folding fan in his laboratory and the bulb lasted much longer.
Edison then sent researchers around the world to find the best bamboo. According to the shrine, one of them, William H. Moore, was introduced in Kyoto to the bamboo of Yawata. Yawata City explains that this was madake, and that the bamboo helped Edison make the bulb practical. A monument to Edison was first built beside the shrine in 1934.
Polishing and removing the oil
Fresh bamboo is green and a little oily. Before using it for fences or crafts, Japanese craftspeople remove some of that oil, a step called abura-nuki.
One way is to warm the stem with a flame until the oil rises to the surface, and wipe it off quickly with a cloth. Another is to boil the stems. In our workshop we have also polished stems with damp rice bran and rice husks, rubbing gently with a soft cloth. The photo at the top shows how the colour changes.
Our silkie chickens like this job too. Whatever bran falls to the ground, they clean up in minutes.
If you grow them outside Japan
In Japan these are grove bamboos. In Britain, the Royal Horticultural Society describes Henon bamboo as a garden plant about 2.5 to 4 metres tall. It also notes that these bamboos have running rhizomes. They may stay in a clump in poor or dry soil, but they can become invasive in warm, moist conditions.
That matches what we see in Japan. A bamboo grove that nobody looks after spreads into fields, gardens and the woods next door. If you plant either of these, give the rhizomes a limit from the start.
Common questions
Is madake the same as Japanese timber bamboo? Yes. Madake is the Japanese name for Phyllostachys bambusoides, sold in Europe and North America as timber bamboo.
Is hachiku the same as Henon bamboo? Yes. Hachiku is Phyllostachys nigra var. henonis, listed by the Royal Horticultural Society as Phyllostachys nigra f. henonis.
How can I tell them apart quickly? Both have two rings at each node. Madake sheaths have black-brown spots. Hachiku sheaths have none, and young hachiku stems look whitish.
Which one is used for a tea whisk? Hachiku. Japan's Forestry Agency notes that it splits cleanly into fine strips.
Two bamboos, one grove
Madake bends. Hachiku splits. One wrapped people's lunches and lit Edison's bulb. The other whisks tea.
When we walk into a grove in Mie, we look down at the sheaths on the ground first. They tell us which bamboo we are working with, and how to care for it.
