BAMBOOS OF INDI A

Bambusa
DESCRIPTION
Culms 10-15 m tall, singly growing from a creeping
rhizome; internodes 15-25 cm long, covered with
golden yellow hairs and transverse blotches, thinwalled.
Culm-sheaths 12-15 cm long and 10-12 cm
broad, striate, covered with dense, appressed hairs;
imperfect blade as long as or longer than the sheath,
narrow, the sides widened out into large, inflated,
membranous wings, broadly rounded on the
sheath; ligule very short. Leaves 10-15 cm long and
2-2.5 cm broad, lanceolate, rounded at the base
into short petiole; leaf-sheath glabrous, striate,
minutely auricled. Inflorescence a panicle made
up of branches bearing distant sub-verticillate
groups of spikelets, many sterile. Fertile spikelets
1.5-2.5 cm long, at first cylindrical, afterwards
compressed, glabrous, 5-6-flowered, the lower
hermaphrodite, the upper 1-2 imperfect, sterile;
rachilla striate, fimbriate at the top; glumes short,
ovate, mucronate, brown on the margins, glabrous;
lemmas same as glumes, 11-13-nerved, glabrous;
palea 2-keeled, ciliate on the keels; lodicules ovateorbicular,
many-nerved, shortly fimbriate. Stamens
with obtuse anthers. Ovary linear-oblong with short
style; stigmas 3, plumose.
FLOWERING
Collected in flowering during 1850 and 1885 from Jaintiapur (Meghalaya) and Manipur by Clarke (Gamble, 1896).
DISTRIBUTION
➤
line 12
Fig. 12. B. khasiana. A - leafy branch; B - flowering branch;
C - young shoot; D - spikelet; E - flowering glume; F - palea;
G - lodicule; H - stamen; I - pistil.
Found in Khasi and Jaintia Hills of Meghalaya and North Cachar Hills of Assam in India. Also found in Myanmar.
Bambusa kingiana
Bambusa kingiana Gamble, Ann. Roy. Bot. Gard. Calcutta 7: 46. 1896 and in Hook. f., Fl. Brit. India 7: 393. 1896;
Camus, Les Bambusees 123. 1913; Naithani, Fl. Pl. India, Nepal and Bhutan 513. 1990; Tewari, Monogr. Bamboo 39.
1992. (Fig. 13).
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