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Bambusa bambos

Species of grass

Bambusa bambos
Summary

Species of grass

in the Singapore Botanic Gardens

Bambusa bambos, (synonym Gigantichloa maxima) the giant thorny bamboo, Indian thorny bamboo, spiny bamboo, or thorny bamboo (but see Bambusa spinosa) is a species of clumping bamboo native to southern Asia (India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Indochina). It is also naturalized in Seychelles, Central America, West Indies, Java, Malaysia, Maluku, and the Philippines.

Habit

It is a tall, bright-green colored spiny bamboo species, which grows in thickets consisting of a large number of heavily branched, closely growing culms. It reaches a height of 10–35 m and grows naturally in the forests of the dry zones. It is very fast growing, lengthening up to 50 cm in the twelve night-time hours. Since most of the growth is at night, it probably practices Crassulacean Acid Metabolism or CAM. The record growth for this species is 90 cm in 24 hours at Kew Gardens near London in 1855.

Appearance

Illustration of leaves, fruits and flowers.

The culms are not straight, and are armed with stout, curved spines. They are bright green, becoming brownish green when drying, and the young shoots are deep purple. Branches spread out from the base. Aerial roots reach up to few nodes above. The internode length is 15–46 cm, and diameter is 3.0–20 cm, and the culm walls are 2.5–5.0 cm thick. Nodes are prominent and rootstock is stout.

Culm sheaths are dark brown when mature, elongated, and cylindrical. Length of the sheath proper is 15–25 cm and 12–30 cm in width. Blade length is 4.0–12 cm. Auricles are not prominent. Upper surfaces of the sheath are covered with blackish-brown hairs. Lower surfaces of the sheath are not hairy. Sheaths fall early.

Uses

They are extensively used in many applications, mainly for making bridges and for ladders. Leaves are used for thatching.

References

Bibliography

  • Fern, Ken. "Bambusa bambos". Useful Tropical Plants. January 1, 2016.

References

  1. "Bambusa bambos (L.) Voss". The Plant List, RBG Kew.
  2. "Giant thorny bamboo (Bambusa bambos) | Feedipedia".
  3. (2022). "Bambusa bambos (giant thorny bamboo)". CABI Compendium.
  4. "Indian Thorny Bamboo - Encyclopedia of Life".
  5. "Plants of the World Online {{!}} Kew Science".
  6. Ohrnberger, Dieter. (1999). "The bamboos of the world: annotated nomenclature and literature of the species and the higher and lower taxa". Elsevier.
  7. De la Rue, E.Aubert. (1957). "The Tropics". Alfred A. Knopf.
  8. Arbor, Agnes B.. (1934). "The Graminae - A Study of Cerial, Bamboo and Grasses". Cambridge Univ. Press.
Wikipedia Source

This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page.

bambusa flora-of-tropical-asia plants-described-in-1753 botanical-taxa-named-by-carl-linnaeus taxa-named-by-andreas-voss austronesian-agriculture
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