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Bamboos
Bamboos (subfamily Bambusoideae) are among the broad-leaved grasses (Poaceae) associated with forest habitats, but bamboos are the only major lineage of grasses to diversify in forests. Bambusoideae receive robust support in recent analyses of the grass family, with the unique feature of well developed, asymmetrically invaginated arm cells in the leaf blade mesophyll. Large, apparently empty cells (fusoid cells) are also usually present in the mesophyll, but these are not unique to bamboos. The Bambusoideae, with ca. 1,400 described species in 101-118 genera, are classified into two major groups recognized as tribes: the woody bamboos (Bambuseae) with ca. 1,290 species distributed worldwide and the herbaceous bamboos (Olyreae) with ca. 110 species restricted largely to the Americas. Woody bamboos may range in size from species with delicate culms a few cm in height to species with massive culms up to 30 cm in diameter and up to 120 m in height. The woody bamboos are regarded as having a single origin based on the presence of several morphological features, including the presence of culm leaves (leaves modified for the protection and support of the tender young shoots), complex vegetative branching, and gregarious monocarpy (with flowering cycles ranging from a few years to 120 years), but to date support for a single origin of the tribe from molecular sequence data is lacking. Herbaceous bamboos are small- to medium-sized, non-lignified, clump-forming, stoloniferous, or occasionally scandent plants with limited vegetative branching and unisexual spikelets. In contrast to woody bamboos, herbaceous bamboos are strongly supported as having a single origin by molecular sequence data, but no unequivocally unique morphological feature has been identified for this tribe.
Phyllostachys sp.
Arthrostylidium sarmentosum
Photo by Dr. Lynn Clark
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