Aging bamboo from wal-mart

[BarredOwl]

I grabbed a bundle of bamboo plant stakes at Wal-mart tonight.  I selected what looked like might be the nicest bundle and noticed it had a greener tint (not the green dyed kind) to it compared to the other bundles that were much tanner in color.  When I pulled one out of the bundle when I got home it seemed fairly flimsy compared to some of the green dyed ones I already had.  I remember seeing a post or several posts that talked about the importance of getting 2 year old shoots and I thought I read somewhere how to identify if shoots were 1 or 2 years old by looking at something at the nodes.  I may be dreaming that up and it may have been in regards to river cane and not bamboo.  Can someone straighten me out on this?   

[Pat B]

The cane you buy at garden centers is probably mature. Immature cane wrinkles lengthwise as it dries. Color has nothing to do about age. Place those greenish canes in bright sunshine and they will turn tan.

[Salvador 06]

I've handled hundreds of tonkin bamboo sticks over the years, I don't get them in bundles but select them from a bins.  The color doesn't tell you anything, as Pat said, and its difficult to tell how old the plant was at cutting, but I have noticed a couple of patterns:

-the weaker ones are few, but often thicker
-they're lighter than the rest
-they have excellent nodes, as in flush with the rest of the shaft
-the nodes don't have oval branchlet scars

I suspect they're somewhat immature but from thicker stems and if left in the ground longer would become harder and heavier.