Latinised from the Malayan common name bambu.
Often tall, extremely fast-growing, clump-forming perennial with hollow woody culms to up to 25 m or more tall and 10 cm wide. New shoots appear in late summer. Rhizomes short, branching and with thick sheaths. Branches numerous at each node and often of different thicknesses and sizes. Leaves not basally aggregated, with auricles and bristles, rolled in bud, the sheaths usually deciduous, tessellation absent. Inflorescence indeterminate with false spikelets, spathed. Inflorescence of spikelets without glumes, or rarely 1 glume with 5-7 florets. Glumes one to several per spikelet, hairless, lower glume 7-18 nerved, upper glume 7-18 nerved. Lemmas blunt, hairless, 9-22 nerved. Palea relatively long, entire to apically notched, 6-16 nerved, 2-keeled.
Grown, often as hedges or in tubs, for the attractive culms and foliage. Large clumps may persist around old garden sites, the species occasionally encountered in warm regions being B. balcooa, B. vulgaris Schrad. 'Vittata' with green striped culms, and B. glaucescens (Lour.) Steud. B. balcooa is a tall growing species forming vast clumps, a specimen may be seen at the Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria (Melbourne Gardens) in the Central Lawn.
Clump division or stem layers and cuttings.
Source of timber, pulp, edible bamboo shoots and for construction. Sacred in India and Indonesia. Paper pulp and rayon are obtained from several species.
Multiple, often tangled, branches at the nodes.
About 120 species from tropical and subtropical Asia, Africa and America. 3 species native to Australia though their placement in this genus is doubtful.
Holttum (1956).
Source: (2005). Poaceae. In: . Horticultural Flora of South-eastern Australia. Volume 5. Flowering plants. Monocotyledons. The identification of garden and cultivated plants. University of New South Wales Press.
