Final report bamboo revisionary - Kerala Forest Research Institute

K F R I
1. INTRODUCTION
The bamboos are one of the conspicuous groups of plants that have fascinated the human
mind with their shining green culms and caespitose appearance since ancient times. There
are over 1575 species under 111 genera (Ohrnberger, 1999) distributed in the tropical,
subtropical and temperate regions of the world. Bamboos also occur in semi evergreen, the
tropical moist deciduous and dry deciduous forests. It is estimated that about 80 per cent of
the bamboo growing areas are confined to South and South-East Asia.
India is endowed with a large number of bamboo species and is perhaps having the world's
one of the largest resources of bamboos. The people dwelling in bamboo growing areas in
India irrespective of their ethnicity and culture depend on bamboos for their shelter, food,
medicine and consider bamboos as the symbol of wealth. The species diversity coupled with
their common occurrence in the Indian subcontinent attracted many for their utility in day-today
needs. The over utilization of some of the genera whether for industrial or other wise, has
lead to the destruction of their natural habitats. However, owing to the economic potential,
many bamboo species are introduced for cultivation from the neighbouring countries.
Bamboo taxonomy in India has suffered considerable neglect over the last century and the
taxonomists kept away this plant group because of their monocarpic mode of life, rarity of
flowering specimens and varying morphological characters.
It was Munro (1868), who published a monograph of bamboos with descriptions of 170
species belonging to 20 genera, which included 52 unflowered species (many of them
belonging to the Indian Sub-continent). Beddome's Flora Sylvatica (1873) dealt with 18 South
Indian bamboo species. It has been over 108 years since the bamboos of India were revised by
Gamble (1896), who published the most comprehensive monograph on bamboos of British
India in which he described 115 species under 15 genera including that of the present Indian
phyto-geographic regions. After Gamble's monumental work on Indian bamboos, Brandis
(1899) and Blatter (1929) pointed some taxonomic delimitation of Indian bamboos.
Subsequent studies on bamboo taxonomy undertaken in India also contributed substantially
to the bamboo systematics. Bahadur (1979) emphasised the need to study and update
bamboo taxonomy. Some of the significant studies on Indian bamboos are those of Bahadur
and Naithani (1976,1983), Naithani and Bennet (1986,1991), Bennet (1988,1989),
Majumdar (1985, 1989), Naithani (1990a, 1990b, 1992, 1993, 1994a, 1994b), Bennet and
Gaur (1990), Kumar (1990, 1993, 1995), Tewari (1992), Stapleton (1994a, 1994b, 1994c,
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