Schizostachyum Nees

Abstract

Arborescent or shrubby bamboos. Rhizomes sympodium. Culms caespitose, erect, inclining, or scrambling; internodes terete, surfaces with silica, scabrous, setose deciduously, a ring of white powder below the nodes, culm-walls thin; sheath nodes prominent due to the residue of the culm-sheaths; culm-nodes flat. Culm bud solitary. Branches many, clustered, nearly the same length, no major branches. Culm-sheaths tardily deciduous, leathery to thick-papery, abaxially with silica and setae or glabrous; auricles inconspicuous or seldom prominent, oral setae usually present; ligules short, truncate, fimbriate; blades lanceolate, linear, or ovate-triangular, reflexed, adaxially with dense setae. A few leaves on each branchlet; auricles inconspicuous; ligules truncate and short; leaves large, transverse veins obvious initially. Pseudospikelets several to many on each node of the flowering branches nodes with leaves or not, sometimes on the nodes of the main culms; prophyll triangle or linear-lanceolate; bracts 1 to several with buds inside; 1 or 2 fertile florets on each pseudospikelet, or 3–4 florets with the top or the second one fertile; rachilla disarticulated, extending below the fertile florets as a petiole; glumes absent; lemma of the fertile florets curly, many-veined; palea curly, keels absent; lodicules absent, sometimes 1–3; stamens 6, filaments free or basally combined; ovary petiolate, style 1, stigmas 3, plumose. Caryopses fusiform, stigmas persistent at the apex. New shoots summer to early autumn.