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Sarocalamus faberi

culm sheath with no auricles or oral setae
leaf sheath with radiating oral seta
see collections at the Smithsonian Institution
See type specimen in Kew Herbarium

  Type Specimen Image

  (Herbarium Catalogue)

see photos at BambooWeb
search Google for images
see origin in Google Earth
see account in Flora of China
see listing in ABS Species & Sources List
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See description in Kew's GrassBase - The Online World Grass Flora
See description in Kew's GrassBase - The Online World Grass Flora

Sarocalamus faberi (Rendle) Stapleton, Novon 14(3): 348 (2004)

 Synonyms: Arundinaria faberi; Bashania faberi; Sinarundinaria faberi. Arundinaria fangiana; Bashania fangiana; Gelidocalamus fangianus; Sinarundinaria fangiana.

  Missouri Botanical Garden's Tropicos Database of Names  TROPICOS

    International Plant Names Index   IPNI

   Multilingual Multiscript Plant Names Database  MMPND

  POWO

Plants spreading widely and forming dense thickets. Culms to 0.5-3 m tall, to 3-8 mm in diam., pluricaespitose, initially very erect, later nodding; internodes terete, smooth, glossy with light wax below nodes, often purple-spotted, all purple when exposed; nodes with thin dark sheath scar; supranodal ridge absent, branches 3-4 at first, erect, precocious, basal internodes long. Culm sheaths thin, persistent, convexly attenuating to narrow apex, glabrous, margins distally ciliate?; auricles absent; oral setae absent; ligule arcuate, to 1 mm wide deep; blade small, lanceolate, deciduous, reflexed. Leaf sheaths persistent, glabrous, becoming red-purple above, margins ?; ligule obliquely truncate, c. 1 mm, glabrous and serrulate; auricles small, round or ovate; oral setae several, spreading or radiating, twisted, 3-8 mm long; blade to 12 cm long, to 14 mm wide, thin, adaxially matt or slightly glossy, glabrous, abaxial matt, glabrous; petiole glabrous. Named after Ernst Faber (1839-1899), German missionary and plant collector, who first collected it.

A very hardy spreading bamboo with no culm sheath auricles or oral setae, distal internode wax, and several persistent, radiating, wavy leaf sheath oral setae, usually from a rounded auricle, rather than the more oblong leaf sheath auricle of S. racemosus. Flowered in the 1980s with serious consequences for Giant Pandas in China.

The name Arundinaria fangiana was published after publication of the name A. faberi. A. fangiana was described from Emei Shan in Sichuan, and the type of A. faberi is very likely to be also from Emei Shan. From their type localities and similarities they are very probably the same species, so the epithet fangiana would be a synonym of faberi, in every genus.

Bashania qingchengshanensis, with larger leaves, rougher culms, and more branches, Sarocalamus spanostachyus with single leaf sheath oral setae and no leaf sheath auricles, and this species, are all grown under the names Bashania faberi and Bashania fangianus, or combinations in Gelidocalamus, as is a further as yet unidentified bamboo in western cultivation.

Note that Gelidocalamus is not closely related to either Sarocalamus or Bashania.

 

 

 

 

Source in Google Earth Introduced from Wolong by Campbell as 1980s seed, and from Pingwu in Sichuan in 1997.

[faberi] [spanostachyus] [racemosus]