64 THE BAMBOO GARDEN CHAP. 
are to be found in the rhizome of Phyllostachys. Indeed, 
the characteristics of the two genera are as_ jealously 
_ guarded in the underground as in the overground stem. As 
is the case with the culms, each internode is wrapped in a 
sheath, richly stained at first with purple, but dying away to 
a dirty straw colour, and terminating in a ligule and hmbus 
or blade; but this latter appendage is not easy to find, as it 
is very quickly deciduous and is lost in the earth. These 
sheaths differ from the sheaths of the culm in their venation, 
which is not tessellated, and in the parallel veins being 
broader than those of the overground stem. In the axil 
formed by the base of its guardian sheath is the scaly 
stem-bud, appearing alternately on the knots on each side of 
the rhizome. These buds are not so flat as those of the 
culm, but are convex and bulge out. They are brilliantly 
enamelled, of a creamy white colour, and the outer scales 
being fringed, to guard against any danger from water, they 
look, in an early stage before the scales begin to separate, 
like shark’s teeth. The nodes are encircled by verticillate 
roots without nodes or joints, each of which is covered with 
innumerable curly rootlets arranged in no symmetrical order. 
These roots pierce and tear their way through the sheaths 
which are thus, in the fulness of time, forced away from the 
parent rhizome and perish in the earth. The rhizome 
then wears a beautifully polished surface like ivory, of 
the colour to which the Japanese artists stain their carved 
Nétsukés; but immediately below the node this ivory yellow 
is delicately clouded with green, shading off to purple, and 
here the lens reveals a clothing of very minute silvery down 
(another careful provision of Nature for warding off water), 
