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.
Oh is that why I shouldn’t have 2 different plants in the same pot?
Sometimes I take too long to weed out things such as grass or clover from pots, and it seems to have bad effects on the plants closer to them while the same ones further down the pot go better. Other combinations of flowers also don’t go well. I’m suspecting purple chalibrachoas suffocate the yellow and red ones, for example.
There is competition between some plants for minerals, light and water. In the a pot the space is really limited that can be the case. It’s true though that some plants work better together.