lv INTRODUCTION. 
in the common “Male bamboo” (Dendrocalamus strictus) when it is found growing in 
а suitable dry locality and on poor soil, as for instance in the Siwalik Hills near 
Hardwar. In Arundinaria Prainü, а very thin wiry climbing species, the culms are 
usually, if not always, solid. The nodes of the culms of bamboos are always 
prominent, some, however, less so than others; the lower ones frequently bear 
root scars or curved thick stiff rootlets surrounding them as a fringe. These roots 
sometimes develop and enter the ground, but very often they dry up and leave pro- 
minent scars or projecting stumps. Some bamboos have their nodes shaggy with circles 
of hair, in some the nodes broaden out (as in Dendrocalamus patellaris) into flattish 
plates; while some again are furnished with a ring of more or less formidable spines. 
Such spines occur in Arundinaria callosa and Ст Мапа. and in Dinochloa 
Tjangkorreh ; and in these species they seem to be due more to arrested rootlets 
than is the case with the spines of Bambusa arundinacea and В. Вштеапа, 
which are only borne on branches, and not on the main culm, and which are 
attached only on one side, where they are obviously caused by arrested buds which 
may or may not afterwards develop into branchlets. None of these species, however, 
have the spines of any great length, nothing like those of a species which is said 
to occur on the hills between Burma and Assam, and to bear at its nodes spines 
between 4 and 6 inches long and very sharp, so that to penetrate the thickets must be 
a work of considerable danger even to wild animals accustomed to the jungles. Usually 
the knots eross the culms at right angles, but occasionally specimens are found with the 
knots united into a spiral (See Kurz Ind. Forester, I. 252, plate 1, figure 2.) 
This is especially the case with Melocanna bamusoides. In size, the culms of bamboos 
are very variable, and range from the gigantic culm of Dendrocalamus giganteus, 
which often reaches 100 to 120 feet in length, with a diameter of 8 to 10 inches, 
down to those of the little Arundinaria densifolia, which is hardly 3 feet high at 
most, with diameter of 4 inch. Between these limits almost every possible size may 
be met with, though of course in some of the climbing species the length of culm 
may frequently be greater than even the 100 feet of the giant “Wado.” The inter- 
nodes of bamboos vary in character as much as the nodes, chiefly in colour, or in amount 
of pubescence. Most, of them are green in colour, of various shades, some tending to 
white when covered with waxy scurf, some to brown or grey when furnished with 
thick appressed spicules (е./., the felted culms of Bambusa polymorpha or the velvety 
ones of Oxytenanthera monostigma), and some, as in a variety of Bambusa vulgaris, to 
yellow with green stripes. In Bambusa а тв and Gigantochloa verticillata the inter- 
nodes are striped with pale green and white. In length, too, the internodes vary 
much, the longest being probably those of Tei»ostachyum Helferi, which have been 
. known to reach 52 inches. | 27. | 
Before completing my remarks upon the culms of bamboos, it is necessary to 
mention the substance “ tabasheer," which is a.“ silicious whitish floury substance, which 
— is found as a secretion, or more probably as a residuum, in the interior of the joints 
“of several species (especially Bambusa arundinacea), often up to an inch i 1 э» 
(Kurz in Ind, Porcio, L 930). "This | p inch in thickness 
i ?, 1. . this substance has been much discussed from the 
