Could you help me to id these bamboo like plants? #4 dies back in winter, leaving many sturdy cane sticks behind. The others are evergreen. Let me know if you need close up pictures. Thanks
Numbers 1, 2 and 3 are all true bamboos. They're all of the clumping type (as opposed to the more familiar running type that would be all over the garden by now) and they seem modest in size -- all of which would suggest the genus Fargesia. At a guess, I think #2 might be what my Fargesia nitida might look like, had it lived. #3 looks a bit like my F. robusta. There are at least another two species in the nursery trade over here (and over there, I assume). For that matter, there are other clumping bamboo species that would be hardy in Ireland that I know nothing about -- but I bet the experts in the Grasses & Bamboos discussion area would recognize them immediately. Is this your garden? If so, I'd suggest pruning out the oldest canes -- take out about one-third per year -- to give the remaining leaves some air and light, and also to give the plant a more graceful "bamboo-like" appearance.
The one on the left looks like F. nitida, a monocarpic (once-blooming) species which has been flowering and dying for some years now. Spikelets are visible in your picture.
#4 is not a bamboo, probably a miscanthus gigantus as the other poster pointed out. 1 and 3 look like clumpers of some kind but number 2 could be a runner that's constrained inside some underground container giving the false impression that it's a clumping type as it looks a lot like the phyllostachys runners I have of one kind or another.
