Abstract:
Of the seven grass (Gramineae, Poaceae) subfamilies, bamboo (Bambusoideae) is the
most distinctive. 6 Members of this subfamily range from small herbaceous, perennial, tropical
humid forest broad-leaved grasses (e.g., Sucrea7 •M) to enormous perennial woody bamboos
with stems (culms) to 30 m in height (e.g., Dendrocalamlls. Phyllostachys4.6). One of these
large plants may occupy several hundred square meters with a nearly impenetrable thicket
of. stems. The small forest grass bamboos are of great interest in understanding the evolution
of bamboos as they are thought to represent the ancestral types,M but have unexceptional
flowering behavior in that they flower annually as do most nonbambusoid grasses. On the
other hand, the large bamboos have long attracted both curiosity and economic concern
because of their peculiar behavior of flowering and then dying synchronously at long supraannual
intervals.
