BAMBOOS OF INDI A

Bamboos of India
persistent, clothed on the back with thick, white, stiff, pubescence, rounded at the top margins thin and ciliate; ligule
ca. 4 mm high, dentate; auricles 2, very small, triangular blade upto 23 cm long, 2-3 cm broad, recurved, awl-shaped,
hairy on both surfaces. Young shoots cone shaped, orange mixed with light green colour, covered with white hairs blade
narrow erect. Leaves 15-20 cm long and 1.2-1.5 cm broad, light green, linear-lanceolate, acuminate, base rounded into
a short petiole, both surfaces rough, hairy beneath, scabrous on the margins. Inflorescence a large compound curved,
thyrsoid panicle, with usually one long and two shorter flower- bearing spikelets and one or more sterile ones; rachis
flexuose, hairy, swollen at the top; bracts straw coloured, blunt; sheath 1.2-2.4 cm or more long, sometimes with a
deciduous, green imperfect blade. Spikelets 1.5-2.5 cm, longer ones with long jointed rachis, shorter ones with very
short joints; rachis hairy, flexouse; fertile flowers 2-3, with an uppermost rudimentary flower on a slender terminal
rachilla; empty glumes 2, ovate-acute, ca. 1.3 cm, striate, many-nerved with conspicuous transverse veinlets, sparsely
hairy outside; flowering glume similar, 2-5-nerved and hairy between the keels, divided often one-fourth of the way
down into long hairy cleft, glabrous except the acute tip, many-nerved; rachilla hairy; lodicules 2, lanceolate, acuminate,
ciliate, very thin. Stamens long exserted, drooping; filaments purple; anthers yellow, the connective protruded into a
blunt point. Ovary yellow, depressed-turbinate, stalked, surmounted by a long style, bearing three broad feathery
stigmas. Caryopsis about 1 cm long, glabrous, cylindrical, with a somewhat broader top, spongy below, ending in a long
beak formed by the persistent base of the style; pericarp crustaceous, shining above.
FLOWERING
Flowering cycle is reported to be 48-50 years. This species gregariously flowered in Myanmar in 1891. The plants raised
at Dehra Dun flowered in November 1938 and seed ripened in January 1939. It flowered in 1962-63 at Haldwani (U.P.)
and during 1986 and 1987 at Dehra Dun (Rawat, 1987). Flowers are protrandrous, three florets are hermaphrodite,
only the uppermost floret produces a seed. At the time of flowering all the foliar leaves turn yellow and fall away and the
whole clump is gradually transferred into a gigantic inflorescence. Majority of the floriferous shoots are apical elongations
of ordinary branches, some are special lateral shoots from an ordinary branch.
DISTRIBUTION
This species is a native of Myanmar. Planted in Indian Botanic Gardens Calcutta, FRI, Dehra Dun, Haldwani in Uttar
Pradesh and Chessa in Arunachal Pradesh. T. oliveri is also found in many other places as the seeds from Haldwani has
been distributed to many forest divisions in Uttar Pradesh and in some other states (Rawat, 1987). Plantation trials
were conducted in 1940 in Palghat, Nilambur and Wynad (Kerala) and Coimbatore (Tamil Nadu) and it has established
very well.
ANATOMY AND FIBRE CHARACTERISTICS
In the culm epidermis, long cells rhomboidal with straight walls, papillae in single large groups, guard cells of stomata
dumbbell shaped, subsidiary cells absent, spicules present. Internodal structure shows heterogeneous cortex with
hypodermis, complete peripheral vascular bundles, scattered fibres also present, in transitional vascular bundles only
phloem cap distinct, central vascular bundles all with six fibre groups, lining of the cavity parenchymatous (Pattanath
and Rao, 1969).
Fibre characteristics showed a fibre length of 2.50 mm, fibre diameter 15.47 µm, lumen diameter 5.41 µm, wall thickness
5.52 µm, parenchyma 20.2 per cent. Fibre length varies in different parts of the same culm. The fibre length of
different part of this species in mm is as follows: 2.0, 1.9, 1.89, 1.88, at bottom, one-fourth, middle and three-fourth
height of the culm respectively (Pattanath, 1972). The fine structure of thick walled bamboo fibres is polylamellate. Its
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