io6 
AMERICAN JOURNAL OF BOTANY 
[Vol. io, 
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 an thesis 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. 
