106 AMERICAN JOURNAL OF BOTANY [Vol. 10, 



My experiment in cutting these culms was merely to test the effect of 

 injury on this particular species. I subsequently obtained data from India 

 far more convincing. The Chief Conservator of Forests of the Madras 

 Presidency, India, has kindly informed me that in the bamboo-forest areas, 

 many of which are twenty square miles and more in extent, with Dendro- 

 calamus strictus and Bambusa arundinacea as the predominating growth, 

 the bamboo culms are worked on a rotation of three to four years. 



The periodical cutting over and clearing of the individual clumps has had no known 

 effect on the periodicity of flowering. 



As for other species of bamboo, there is evidence galore showing how 

 little injury affects the continued vegetational growth of the plants. The 

 most common method of raising bamboos is by cuttings, and so far as I am 

 aware all species lend themselves satisfactorily to this method. The little 

 slender bamboo Bambusa nana is commonly used as a hedge plant and is 

 therefore subjected to frequent cutting without any apparent effect on 

 flowering. 



Another form of injury which is said to produce anthesis in bamboos is 

 burning. From the Philippines comes the report that, in a clump of 

 Dendrocalamus (species not given) which had been severely injured by fire, 

 the few uninjured or but slightly injured culms had produced flowers. 

 The case was of especial interest because of an observation made by the 

 writer in Jamaica. Fully ninety-eight percent of the plants of Chusquea 

 abietifolia seen in the mountains of Jamaica had flowered and died in 1919. 

 Two small patches, however, were found which contained green, healthy 

 plants, and one of these patches had recently been burnt over. The charred 

 stubble was still evident. The parent plants had been burnt to the ground 

 before their life cycle was complete, and the living rootstocks had sent up 

 new shoots which were continuing the growth of the plants and thus carrying 

 on the vegetative portion of the life cycle beyond the normal limit. Burning 

 here not only did not cause flowering, but had, on the contrary, apparently 

 prevented it. 



The most convincing example of bamboos flowering as a result of injury 

 that I know of is the report of Branthwaite. He tells of the flowering of 

 three clumps of Dendrocalamus strictus. The flowers were borne on short 

 stems which had their origin just below the surface of the ground from the 

 base of culms which had been cut for a clearing on which a hut was built 

 (2, p. 233). 



While the sum total of evidence is decidedly against the fact that 

 flowering of bamboos can be induced by injury, the reports of Branthwaite, 

 Merrill, and Gamble suggest that injury may at least sometimes in certain 

 species of bamboos produce anthesis. 



