| # The grass genera of the world |

L. Watson, T.D. Macfarlane, and M.J. Dallwitz

### Sinobambusa Makino

Including Neobambus Keng f.

Habit, vegetative morphology. Perennial (shrub or small tree); rhizomatous. The flowering culms leafy. Culms 200–800 cm high; woody and persistent (with long internodes); to 1–3.5 cm in diameter; with grooved internodes; branched above. Primary branches nearly always 3; horizontally aligned. The branching dendroid. Culm leaf sheaths present; deciduous, or persistent; leaving a persisten girdle (sometimes), or not leaving a persistent girdle; conspicuously auriculate, or not conspicuously auriculate. Culm leaves with conspicuous blades. Culm leaf blades linear, or lanceolate. Culm internodes hollow. Pluricaespitose. Rhizomes leptomorph (metamorph type I). Leaves not basally aggregated; with auricular setae, or without auricular setae. Leaf blades broad; 10–35 mm wide; pseudopetiolate; cross veined, or without cross venation; where recorded, demarcated and disarticulating from the sheaths, or persistent; rolled in bud. Contra-ligule absent.

Reproductive organization. Plants bisexual, all with bisexual spikelets; with hermaphrodite florets.

Inflorescence. Inflorescence indeterminate; without pseudospikelets (the spikelets in tufts, each with a bract); lateral, the spikelets in clusters at the nodes; spatheate; a complex of ‘partial inflorescences’ and intervening foliar organs. Spikelet-bearing axes paniculate (clustered); persistent. Spikelets not secund; more or less sessile.

Female-fertile spikelets. Spikelets 30–100 mm long; where recorded, linear; compressed laterally to not noticeably compressed; disarticulating above the glumes; disarticulating between the florets (?). Rachilla prolonged beyond the uppermost female-fertile floret. Hairy callus absent.

Glumes two, or several (?); very unequal; shorter than the adjacent lemmas; awnless; similar. Spikelets without proximal incomplete florets (assuming the ‘bract’ is a bract or a glume).

Female-fertile florets 4–25. Lemmas ovate; entire; pointed; awnless; non-carinate; 11–15 nerved. Palea present; relatively long (almost as long as the lemma); not convolute; entire (pointed); awnless, without apical setae; several nerved (5-nerved); 2-keeled. Lodicules present; 3; free; membranous; glabrous; not toothed; heavily vascularized. Stamens 3. Ovary apically glabrous; where known, without a conspicuous apical appendage. Styles fused (into one, short). Stigmas 3.

Fruit, embryo and seedling. Fruit longitudinally grooved.

Abaxial leaf blade epidermis. Costal/intercostal zonation conspicuous. Papillae present; costal and intercostal (very abundant). Intercostal papillae over-arching the stomata; several per cell (smallish, in one or two rows per cell, sometimes clustered or in branched-pairs). Long-cells similar in shape costally and intercostally; of similar wall thickness costally and intercostally. Mid-intercostal long-cells rectangular; having markedly sinuous walls (the sinuosity fine to coarse). Microhairs present; elongated; clearly two-celled; panicoid-type. Stomata common. Subsidiaries non-papillate; mostly low, parallel-sided, or dome-shaped, or triangular; including both triangular and parallel-sided forms on the same leaf. Intercostal short-cells common; in cork/silica-cell pairs and not paired (some solitary). Numerous prickles with very reduced points costally, and a few macrohairs both costally and intercostally. Costal short-cells conspicuously in long rows (in places), or predominantly paired (in places), or neither distinctly grouped into long rows nor predominantly paired (in places, irregularly grouped). Costal silica bodies present and well developed; saddle shaped (large).

Transverse section of leaf blade, physiology. C3. Mesophyll probably with adaxial palisade (but obscure in the poor material seen); with arm cells; with fusoids. The fusoids external to the PBS. Leaf blade with distinct, prominent adaxial ribs to ‘nodular’ in section (slightly ribbed over the primaries). Midrib conspicuous (by virtue of the large midrib bundle and abaxual keel, and the adaxial and abaxial sclerenchyma masses); with one bundle only; without colourless mesophyll adaxially. The lamina symmetrical on either side of the midrib. Bulliforms present in discrete, regular adaxial groups; in simple fans (these large and broad, in the shallow, wide furrows). All the vascular bundles accompanied by sclerenchyma. Combined sclerenchyma girders present (with the larger bundles); forming ‘figures’ (anchors, with the primaries). Sclerenchyma all associated with vascular bundles.

Cytology. Chromosome base number, x = 12. 2n = 48. 4 ploid.

Classification. Watson & Dallwitz (1994): Bambusoideae; Bambusodae; Bambuseae. Soreng et al. (2015): Bambusoideae; Arundinarodae; Arundinarieae; Arundinariinae. 17 species.

Distribution, phytogeography, ecology. Eastern Asia.

Rusts and smuts. Rusts — Puccinia. Taxonomically wide-ranging species: Puccinia kusanoi.

References, etc. Morphological/taxonomic: Chao and Renvoize 1989. Leaf anatomical: studied by us - S. tootsik Makino.

Illustrations. • Sinobambusa tootsik (as Arundinaria: Camus, 1913). • Abbreviations for Camus (1913) figures. • Sinobambusa tootsik, abaxial epidermis of leaf blade: this project.

We advise against extracting comparative information from the descriptions. This is much more easily achieved using the DELTA data files or the interactive key, which allows access to the character list, illustrations, full and partial descriptions, diagnostic descriptions, differences and similarities between taxa, lists of taxa exhibiting or lacking specified attributes, distributions of character states within any set of taxa, geographical distribution, and classifications. See also Guidelines for using data taken from Web publications.

Cite this publication as: ‘Watson, L., Macfarlane, T.D., and Dallwitz, M.J. 1992 onwards. The grass genera of the world: descriptions, illustrations, identification, and information retrieval; including synonyms, morphology, anatomy, physiology, phytochemistry, cytology, classification, pathogens, world and local distribution, and references. Version: 15th June 2025. delta-intkey.com’.

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