Notes on Taxonomy and Nomenclature

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The genus Bambusa (family Poaceae) consists of 120 bamboo species indigenous to Asia and the New World. B.
vulgaris (common bamboo) is a widely-grown species with several infra-specific taxa, known variously as varieties
or cultivars, including forms with variously green and yellow-striped culms which are sometimes placed in distinct
varieties or even species. ‘Wamin’ is a common cultivated form with ventricose to very short, concertina-like
internodes (Stapleton, 2007).

Description

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Open clumping, sympodial bamboo. Culm erect, sinuous or slightly zig-zag, 10-20 m tall, 4-10 cm in diameter, wall
7-15 mm thick, glossy green, yellow, or yellow with green stripes; internodes 20-45 cm long, with appressed dark
hairs and white waxy when young, becoming glabrous, smooth and shiny with age; nodes oblique, slightly swollen,
basal ones covered with aerial roots. Encased in tightly packed leaves, shoots are conical in shape, bulging slightly
above the base before tapering towards the tip (Collins and Keilar, 2005).
Branches arising from midculm nodes upward, occasionally also at lower nodes, several to many at each node with
primary branch dominant. Culm sheath more or less broadly triangular, 15-45 cm long, 20 cm wide, upper ones
longest, deciduous, light green becoming stramineous, covered with black hairs, margins hairy, apex slightly
rounded at the junction with the blade.

Blade erect, broadly triangular, 4-5 cm long, 5-6 cm wide, slightly narrowed at the junction with the sheath, stiffly
acuminate, hairy on both surfaces and along the lower part of the margins; ligule 3 mm long, slightly serrated;
auricles relatively large, 0.5- 2 cm long, with pale brown bristles 3-8 mm long along the edges. Young shoot yellow
green, covered with black hairs.

Leaf blade 6-30 cm long, 1-4 cm wide, glabrous; ligule a subentire rim 0.5-1.5 mm; auricles small rounded lobes,
with a few bristles 1-3 mm.

Inflorescence usually borne on a leafless branch of a leafless culm or on a culm with small leaves, bearing small
groups of pseudospikelets at the nodes, 2-6 cm apart; spikelets 12-19 (-35) mm long, laterally flattened, appearing
strongly 2-cleft, comprising 5-10 perfect florets and a terminal vestigial floret. Caryopsis not known.

Flowering in B. vulgaris is not common. When a culm flowers, it produces a large number of flowers but no fruit,
and eventually the culm dies, but the clumps usually survive and return to fully vegetative growth within a few
years.

Plant Type

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Perennial
Seed propagated
Vegetatively propagated
Woody

Distribution

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B. vulgaris originated in the Old World, probably in tropical Asia. It is the most widely cultivated bamboo
throughout the tropics and subtropics, but is also found spontaneously or naturalized on river banks. In South-East