Steve Muzos
For the past 40 years, Steve has been a Biology Professor at Austin Community College, Austin, Texas. During that time, he has taught numerous introductory biology and ecology courses, including taking students to Jamaica, Belize and Guatemala to study marine biology and tropical ecology. In Texas, his focus was on native plants for many years. Since 2001, he has been growing bamboo in Central Texas, tending to more than 100 varieties at various times. What began as a visual screen planting became a hobby, then an obsession and a backyard bamboo nursery.
Steve has held several positions with the Texas Bamboo Society and has served as the Texas Bamboo Society Representative on the Board of Directors of the American Bamboo Society. For the past couple of years, he has been developing a morphological key to the Bambusa of the world. During that time, he has visited several herbariums (including the Missouri Botanical Garden and the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History) to examine their bamboo collections.
Steve also operates a small family-owned licensed nursery, BambooBend.com, specializing in ornamental and timber bamboos. His plant stock is eclectic and changes regularly and the current focus is on bamboos for landscaping, windbreaks, and screening.
Steve has been a gardener all his life, has included organic gardening techniques in his teaching, and has focused on bamboo since the turn of the century.
His nursery is located in southwest Austin, Texas in an area known as Oak Hill. In 2002 he started a bamboo grove in Abita Springs, LA and in 2004 in Bastrop, TX as well. Visits in Austin are by appointment only, so please call in advance. www.bamboobend.com
