BAMBOOS : TPIEIR CULTURE AND USES 7 
does not apply to a number of bamboos valuable for ornamental 
plantin<i; and landscape adornment. These striking and beautiful 
plants, it is believed, will plaj- a more and more important part in 
outside decorative work, but their uses in this field are so specialized 
that they necessarily must be treated separately. We are concerned 
noAV with the species and forms likely to prove of widespread value 
for utilitarian purposes as distinguished from aesthetic utilization. 
There are four genera, found mostly in temperate parts of the 
globe, that will supply this country with its chief source of crop 
material. In the order of their economic importance they are 
Ph3dlostachys, Bambos, Sasa, and Arundinaria. Representatives of 
other genera may play an incidental part, but their economic value 
in comparison with those mentioned will be more or less negligible. 
Representatives of these several genera will be described in such a 
wa}^ that it is hoped they can be recognized and their place in future 
work understood. 
GIANT TIMBER BAMBOO 
{Pliyllostacliys hamhusoides Sieb. and Zucc.) 
For reasons not well understood this particular bamboo seems to 
have been born to nomenclatural trouble. In the department's rec- 
ords for 20 years it is referred to under half a dozen different names, 
sometimes one thing, sometimes another. Houzeau de Lehaie de- 
voted about 10 pages of his monograph (8) to an effort to straighten 
out the synonymy of this, species and to explain why it has been 
given so many names and described as being anything from a shrub 
8 to 10 feet high to a tree growing from 50 to 60 feet tall. The giant 
timber bamboo, Phyllostachys hamhusoides^ as we laiow it and have 
established it in this country, has been variously referred to as P. 
quilioi, P. henonis^ and P. wAcranthcL Theise are now regarded as 
belonging to the same species, P. hainbusoides^ originally described 
by Siebold and Zuccarini. 
Good examples of this fine bamboo are to be found growing in 
the grove in the Plant Introduction Garden at Chico, Calif., the 
Barbour Lathrop grove in the Plant Introduction Garden near 
Savannah, Ga., the groves in the Brooksville, Fla., Plant Introduc- 
tion Garden, and the grove owned by William S. Tevis, near Bakers- 
field, Calif. These groves are from 14 to 35 years old and have been 
under observation sufficiently long to furnish very reliable data on 
the character, habits, and hardiness of the plants. No plants of the 
giant timber bamboo have flowered in this country. (PL II.) 
Briefly described, Phyllostachys hambusoides presents the follow- 
ing vegetative characters: 
Height 20 to 70 feet ; stems, or culms, straight, smooth, 2 to 5 inches in 
diameter, flattened on one side in alternate internodes, the flattening being 
more pronounced in the smaller and younger culms, green at first, becomins;' 
yellow with age ; many culms in the grove at Brooksville marked three years 
ago are still green, showing that ripening and maturing are relatively slow 
processes ; nodes, or joints, prominent, smooth ; internodes varying in length 
from 6 to 14 inches, shorter near the ground ; culm sheaths varying in length 
from 2% to 14 inches, depending on the age and size of the plants, 1V> to 3 
inches wide, thin and often mottled and blotched with purplish or brownish 
spots, many nerved, mouths rounded and provided with scattered stilf hairs 
capped with a long narrow lirabus or pseudophyll. (PI. I; S. P. I. No. 24700.) 
