Lucky bamboo
Lucky bamboo is not bamboo but a dracaena from Central Africa, grown in water and sold as a gift for new homes and businesses. Its spiral stems are shaped by growers who keep turning the plant in relation to the light.
What it may mean
Those neat spirals on a lucky bamboo stalk were not built in. Growers lay the young stems on their side or keep them in a box lit from one direction, and the plant bends toward the light. Every so often they turn it a little, and the stem keeps bending to follow, until months later it has curled into a corkscrew. The plant never chose a spiral. It simply kept leaning toward wherever the light was. A person's shape often forms the same way: a career that bent toward the one mentor who noticed them, a sense of humor shaped by the family member who laughed most, a city chosen because a friend was already there. Those curves are worth looking at fondly. They show where the light came from, and they can still straighten a little if the light moves.
Depending on how you saw it
Yellowing stalks in a vase
Lucky bamboo often yellows from strong direct sun or from minerals building up in old water, and it generally recovers with fresh water and softer light. Which small daily condition around you may be wearing you down without your noticing?
True bamboo in Japan
Japanese households hung real bamboo at the doorway, two American editors wrote in 1903, because its wood never changes color and so stood for constancy. Which of your qualities stays the same color through every season?
A stalk cut back
A lucky bamboo stalk cut below the leaves usually pushes out new shoots from a node near the cut, branching instead of growing taller. Where did a cut in your plans make you branch out rather than climb?
Why it happens in nature
Lucky bamboo is Dracaena sanderiana, a plant native to Central Africa with jointed stems that only look like bamboo. It grows well in water with indirect light. Spiral stems are produced by growers who keep the light coming from one side and turn the plant regularly, so that it keeps bending toward the light.
What folk beliefs say
Japan
In Japan, a 1903 collection says, true bamboo was placed over the door, because its wood never changes color and it was therefore considered fortunate because constant.
Source: Cora Linn Daniels; C. M. Stevans (eds.), Encyclopaedia of Superstitions, Folklore, and the Occult Sciences of the World, vol. 2 (1903), vol. 2, p. 768. View the page
To reflect on
Which curve in your life came from leaning toward the only light available at the time?