62 THE BAMBOO GARDEN CHAP. 
begins to take place on the upper part, which takes precedence 
of the lower. The manner of the branching is as follows. 
If you strip off with a penknife the closely adherent sheath 
of a culm approaching maturity, you will see a little, flat, 
dome-shaped bud composed of a number of scales resting upon 
a tiny cushion, formed by a very thin membrane in the axil 
of the sheath, beautifully fringed with silken hairs to keep 
out moisture, and fitting closely into a slight depression in 
the stem. Take a more forward culm and the dome has 
developed into a number of tiny spires with one tall steeple 
in the middle, which grow and swell until they are meta- 
morphosed into a bundle of branches from nine to thirteen 
in number, some smaller, some bigger, but the longest, which 
was the steeple, always in the middle. The sheaths are 
forced away from the stem by the vigorous growth of the 
purple branchlets, and the little silken cushion, which formed 
the bed of the bud, having no longer any duty to perform 
withers and is no more seen. 
The branches are, of course, borne upon alternate sides of 
the culm, which, as they are longer than the internodes and 
rather upright, gives a false air of complete verticillation. 
As with the internodes of the culm, so with those of the 
branchlets, each internode is wrapped in its little sheath of a 
purplish colour ending in a ligule and a blade, which is the true 
leaf. But the ligule is, in proportion to the size of the sheath, 
longer and rounder than those of the culm, and bears, moreover, 
a conspicuous growth of little curly silky hairs. The tessellated 
leaf varies much in size. An average measurement is about 
10 inches long by three-quarters of an inch broad. It shows 
a handsome green colour on the upper surface, more glaucous 
