Running bamboo is notoriously fast spreading and difficult to remove. What keeps its population balanced in the wild, and prevents it from crowding out the competition? I tried googling, but was inundated with gardening advice, horror stories, and assault / offensive gardening (some of the latter two presumably covering the same incident from both sides). My google-fu failed, I couldn’t really find any info about natural population controls of running bamboo in the thicket of tall tales and gardening advice.
I guess my advice was much more specific to traditional “weeds” which are annuals/ biannual / short lived perennials which thrive in disturbed land and in gardens. Bamboo is woody and might not full under that category. These traditionally “weeds” would be plants like creeping bellflower, motherwort, pigweed, plantains, dock, etc. which are human focused plants who only really thrive around human intervention. Plants like these are ubiquitous around humans (in our gardens and lawns) but can’t penetrated less disturbed areas or at later stages of succession. These are our traditional garden weeds which have a long history of use as food sources and medicinal uses with human cultures. If anyone is interested in learning more I would recommend Weeds: In Defense of Nature’s Most Unloved Plants which does a great overview of weeds and their spread.
Those plant that get fully invasive outside of human contact like Purple loosestrife, Tree of Heaven or other invasive noxious weeds are a different story. These are typically garden escapes, have a longer lifecycle and can outcompete and dominates landscapes. I think bamboo might fall closer to this than traditional weeds.
P.S. added the book to my to read list