Gigantochloa Kurz ex Munro

Abstract

Arborescent bamboos. Rhizomes sympodium. Culms caespitose, erect, the apex pendulous, sometimes scrambling; internodes terete, light green, setose, basal internodes with light yellow white stripes, culm walls thick; sheath nodes prominent; culm nodes flat. Branches many, dominant branches conspicuous. Culm sheaths deciduous, thickly leathery, densely setose abaxially; auricles inconspicuous; ligules conspicuous; blades erect or reflexed. Leaves many per branchlet; auricles absent; ligules conspicuous; blades middle to large. Flowering branches leafless, a few to many pseudospikelets on each node, many pseudospikelets clustered glomerate; pseudospikelets fertile or sterile, oblong or linear, (1) 2–5 florets for the fertile pseudospikelet, the top floret usually sterile with only narrow and long lemma; rachilla very short, no joints; glumes 2–3, gradually tapering apically; lemma thickly papery, many veins; palea with 2 keels, keels with cilia, palea of the sterile floret involute, without keels; lodicules absent, or reduced lodicules 1–3; stamens 6, filaments combined into a tube, slender; ovary pubescent, style 1, slender, stigma 1, or split into 2–3, plumose. Caryopses, grooved, pericarp membranous. New shoots from the end of summer to autumn. Florescence long, from the end of spring to autumn.