Flowering of Dendrocalamus giganteus, 

 the "Giant Bamboo." 



BY 



H. F. MACMILLAN. 



THE phenomenon of the simultaneous flowering of bamboos 

 has been often recorded and confirmed. Whilst no one 

 seems to have explained the cause, a great many at the present 

 day believe in the existence of a certain infectious condition 

 which at once influences the flowering of all specimens of the 

 bamboo tribe , whether it be annually or once in a number of 

 years. In the case of species of Dendrocalamus it is considered 

 by expert Indian foresters that the occurrence takes place 

 once in thirty years, and it is a common belief that when the 

 given moment has arrived, every plant of the same species, 

 whether old or young, over a vast region, will put forth its 

 flowers simultaneously , and that having seeded for a time the 

 plant dies. August St. Hilaire, a botanist who explored 

 Brazil, mentions a whole forest of a certain bamboo dis- 

 appearing in a few months after flowering. So recently as 

 during the hot season of 1901 the " Indian Forester " records 

 ' ' the flowering of the ordinary bamboo {Dendrocalamus strictus) 

 extending over an estimated area of 1,200 square miles in the 

 Central Provinces." Though a few clumps here and there 

 have escaped, the phenomenon is described as universal, 

 affecting not only mature clumps, but quite slender seedlings 

 • of a few years' growth. But against this report there is the 

 statement by Lord Redesdale in his book on Bamboos, that 

 this same species {Dendrocalamus strictus), also known as the 

 " Solid" or " Male bamboo," flowers every year. At Pera- 

 deniya, where this has flourished for the last thirty-nine years, 

 an occasional stem has been seen to blossom, but neither annual 

 nor periodical wholesale flowering has as yet been observed. 

 We can therefore at least contradict the statement that it 

 blossoms annually so far as Peradeniya is concerned. 



[Annals of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Peradeniya, Vol. IV., Part IV., Dec, 1908.] 



