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Sasa palmata

mottled older culm broad leaves in palmate array large blade emerging old leaf sheaths large single branches
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see photos at BambooWeb
dense sprawling culms
exact origin unknown
see account in Index to Japanese Bambusaceae
no account in Flora of China
see listing in ABS Species & Sources List
find UK supplier
See description in Kew's GrassBase - The Online World Grass Flora
See description in Kew's GrassBase - The Online World Grass Flora

Sasa palmata (Burb.) E. G. Camus, Les Bambuses 25. 1913.

Synonyms: Bambusa palmata Burb., Gard. Chron. ser. 3, 7: 641. 1890.

  Missouri Botanical Garden's Tropicos Database of Names  TROPICOS

    International Plant Names Index   IPNI

   Multilingual Multiscript Plant Names Database  MMPND

  POWO

Culms 1.5–4 m tall, 0.4–1 cm thick, often curved; internodes 14–20 cm, green, initially green, sometimes with purplish-brown patches later, white-waxy when young, densely and persistently so in a broad band below nodes, finely striate; nodes slightly raised. Culm sheaths shorter than the internode, glabrous, persistent; auricles and oral setae absent; blade small, lanceolate. Leaf sheaths glabrous, white-glaucous when young; auricles and oral setae absent; ligule conspicuous, truncate, to 3mm, glabrous, nearly entire; blade broad, 18–30 cm long, 5–8 cm wide, thick, coriaceous, glabrous, with 9–14 pairs of secondary veins and yellow midribs. Name from the Latin palmatus, ‘hand-like’, for the leaf blade arrangement, shared by all members of the genus but more noticeable in this species because of the large broad leaves.

 

Native to several parts of Japan and also frequently cultivated, Sasa palmata is very vigorous and invasive, and can become an impenetrable dense mass of sprawling older growth. The plants normally cultivated have irregular ‘nebulous’ brown markings or more uniform brown colouring on older culms and leaf sheaths when mature.

 

 

[kurilensis] [palmata] [veitchii] [quelpaertensis]