Raising Cane

When Hermine Stover was a young sprout growing up in Brooklyn, her uncle let her choose among several trinkets he had found in Asia during World War II. Of all the exotic offerings, she picked a simple bamboo cane. “I have always felt the wild romance of bamboo--its shape, its color, the way it moves in the wind,” says Stover, whose Riverside County nursery, Endangered Species, offers 180 selections of the plant.

Thanks to Stover’s bamboo, Hollywood celebrities can skinny-dip without fear of paparazzi, and Indiana Jones has his own jungle at Disneyland. The rest of us, Stover says, can have one, too. “Bamboo isn’t demanding; it just grows--and comes in every size, from ground covers to shrubs to mid-size and giant trees.”

Twenty-five years ago, Stover began growing bamboo in Boston, much to the shock of rose-growing neighbors, who lined up to gawk at it. She was working as an architectural designer with her husband, Roger, an architect, and collecting plants on the side. Before she knew it, her hobby crowded out other interests, and she and Roger were on their way to California.

In 1975, her nursery was born and has since evolved from a small mail-order business into the Southland’s largest specialized bamboo-growing operation. Over the years, Stover has became as well-known for her personal style--which includes a fondness for radical hairstyles, tattoos and American pit bull terriers--as for her plants. But then bamboo itself is considered by some a radical, even dangerous, plant, a characterization that makes Stover apoplectic. “Prune it right,” she insists, “and it won’t run rampant.” Or, she suggests, avoid the issue by choosing a clumping type such as Bambusa vulgaris vittata, a giant with green-striped yellow canes.

In addition to bamboo, Stover and her husband, who has been her full-time business partner since 1991, sell palms, cycads and sansevierias. But she is especially pleased that demand for her favorite plant is on the rise: “Since the dawn of horticulture, all of Asia has revered bamboo for its economic, aesthetic and even religious significance. I don’t know why we’ve been so slow to get the point.”

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To tour Endangered Species in Perris or request a catalog, call (800) 709-5568.