Neomicrocalamus P. C. Keng

Abstract

Scrambling or inclining bamboos. Rhizomes sympodium, culm necks very short. Culms densely caespitose; internodes terete, long, culm walls very thick or nearly solid; sheath nodes prominent; culm-nodes a little prominent. Branches many, slender, short, and almost equal in length, without secondary branches, sometimes with one dominant branch which can substitute the main culm. Culm sheaths papery, leathery, or gristly, persistent, narrow apically above the middle parts, apex acute; auricles and oral setae absent; ligules short; blades subulate, erect. Branchlets with several leaves; leaf pedicels subtended by the collar-like top of the sheaths; auricles abscent; ligules tall; blades small, papery, lanceolate or linear-lanceolate, transverse veins absent. Flowering branches racemose or panicle; flowering branches slender, with intact leaves or reduced leaves at the base and glume-like bracts present from one to three nodes apically, internodes grooved or flat; pseudospikelets several, subtended by bracts, with one prophyll and one bract at the base, sometimes buds present in bracts, but never germinated; 3–6 fertile florets and 1 sterile floret for each pseudospikelet; rachilla disarticulated among fertile florets; glumes absent, or 1 glume in the top pseudospikelet; lemma with 9–13 veins; palea equal to, longer or a little shorter than the lemma, 2-keeled, ciliate; lodicules 3, ciliate on the upper part; stamens 6, filaments free, anthers purple; style 1, strong, with papillate, stigmas 3, plumose. Caryopses cylindrical, ventral groove conspicuous. New shoots August.