Arundinaria

Arundinaria
Arundinaria tecta northern Florida in March 2003
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Plantae
Clade:	Tracheophytes
Clade:	Angiosperms
Clade:	Monocots
Clade:	Commelinids
Order:	Poales
Family:	Poaceae
Subfamily:	Bambusoideae
Tribe:	Arundinarieae
Subtribe:	Arundinariinae
Genus:	Arundinaria Michx.
Synonyms
Ludolfia Willd. 1808, illegitimate homonym not Adans. 1763 (Aizoaceae) Macronax Raf. Miegia Pers. 1805, illegitimate homonym not Schreb. 1791 (Cyperaceae) Triglossum Fisch.

Arundinaria
Chinese	北美箭竹
Literal meaning	"North American Arrow Bamboo"
Transcriptions

Arundinaria, commonly known as canes, is a genus of bamboo in the grass family. Arundinaria is the only bamboo native to south and southeastern North America, with a native range from Maryland south to Florida and west to the southern Ohio Valley and Texas. Within this region they are found from the Coastal Plain to medium elevations in the Appalachian Mountains. Its members have running rhizomes and are woody and tree-like, attaining heights from 0.5 to 8 metres (1.6 to 26.2 ft). They produce seeds only rarely and usually reproduce vegetatively, forming large genets. When seed production does occur, the colony usually dies afterwards. Among the distinctive features of the canes is a fan-like cluster of leaves at the top of new stems called a topknot, so-called because of its resemblance to topknot hairstyles.

Early explorers in the U.S. described vast monotypic stands of Arundinaria called canebrakes that were especially common in river lowlands. These often covered hundreds of thousands of hectares. These have declined significantly due to clearing, farming and fire suppression. Prior to the European colonization of the Americas, cane was an extremely important resource for local Native Americans. The plant was used to make everything from houses and weapons to jewelry and medicines. It was used extensively as a fuel, and parts of the plant were eaten. The canebrakes also provided ideal land for crops, habitat for wild game, and year-round forage for livestock. After colonisation, cane lost its importance due to the destruction and decline of canebrakes, forced relocation of indigenous people, and the availability of superior technology from abroad.

Grouping of Arundinaria gigantea at Cane Ridge Meeting House in Kentucky, USA

The question of which bamboo species should be included in Arundinaria had been debated for many years before the availability of cladistic genetic analysis and other techniques began to resolve phylogenetic relationships within Arundinaria. Two of the three species currently recognized were originally described by Thomas Walter in 1788, namely Arundo gigantea and Arundo tecta. However, the phenotypic diversity of the American bamboos subsequently led to a variety of taxonomic treatments, with some authors arguing that only the North American species should be included, while others included dozens of Asian species otherwise considered members of other genera (Bashania, Oligostachyum, Sarocalamus, Fargesia, Sasa, etc.).

Accepted species

There are currently three recognized species of the genus Arundinaria accepted by the World Checklist of Selected Plant Families as of March 2016. For each species listed below, binomial name is followed by author citation.

Arundinaria appalachiana Triplett, Weakley & L.G.Clark – Hill cane Arundinaria gigantea (Walt.) Muhl. – River cane Arundinaria tecta Muhl. – Switch cane

'Topknot' at the top of an Arundinaria tecta 'switch cane' culm

Dried Arundinaria 'topknot' from the top of an Arundinaria gigantea 'giant river cane' culm

Arundinaria appalachiana along the Little Tennessee River

Use

Ethnobotanists consider cane to have been extremely important to Native Americans in the Southeastern Woodlands before European colonisation. The plant was used to make structures, arrow shafts, weapons, fishing equipment, jewelry, baskets, musical instruments, furniture, boats, pipe stems, and medicines. Arundinaria gigantea, or river cane, has historically been used to construct Native American flutes, particularly among tribes of the Eastern Woodlands. The Atakapa, Muscogee Creek, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Cherokee, and other Southeastern tribes have traditionally used this material for mat and basket weaving, and the Chitimacha and Eastern Band Cherokee still widely weave with rivercane today. Bean poles made from dried canes can last for several years if properly stored when not in use.

Food uses include flour, cereal, and even "asparagus" of young shoots; however, caution should be used whenever foraging for cane seeds, as the extremely toxic fungus Ergot (Claviceps spp.) can colonize its seeds as well as those of the common cereals. Ergot-infected plants will have pink or purplish blotches or growths about the size of a seed or several times larger.

Medicinally, the Choctaw use the roots for their painkilling properties.

Systematics

Plants currently placed in the genus Arundinaria were first described scientifically by Thomas Walter in his Flora Caroliniana, 1788. However, Walter did not recognise the canes as bamboo, and instead placed them in the superficially similar, but only distantly related grass genus Arundo. He described two species: Arundo gigantea Walt. and Arundo tecta Walt.. In 1803, the French botanist André Michaux, unaware of the flora prepared by Walter, also published a description of the canes he encountered. Michaux recognised only one species, but created a new monotypic genus for it: Arundinaria macrosperma Michx.. The name of the genus he used is derived from the Latin word used by Walter for the plants he described; namely arundo, meaning "reed".

Despite the work done by Walter and Michaux, current researchers have had difficulty interpreting their circumscriptions of species boundaries. Walter designated no type specimens, and his Latin protologues, which describe the species, are vague and include features that could be any of the three species currently recognised. Michaux did designate a type specimen for the species he described, but it does not include enough of the plant to determine with confidence which species it represents, while his protologues were likewise not detailed enough to avoid ambiguity. Later researchers, such as Muhlenberg and Hitchcock, were thus effectively unable to resolve the taxonomy satisfactorily. In 2009, epitypes, a new form of botanical type allowed by the International Code of Botanical Nomenclature in order to clarify older ambiguous types, were designated for Arundo gigantea Walt. and Arundinaria macrosperma Michx.. This allows current and future researchers to know precisely what is being discussed when the scientific names applied to these plants are used.

Rivercane basket in Noon-Day Sun pattern, by Peggy Brennan (Cherokee Nation)

Taxonomic history

The genus Arundinaria has a complex taxonomic history spanning over two centuries. The canes of the southeastern U.S. were originally described as two species of reed grasses in the genus Arundo by Thomas Walter in 1788. André Michaux, working in 1803 and unaware of Walter's work, correctly interpreted the canes as a distinct group and created the genus Arundinaria with one species. However, neither of these researchers left enough information to their successors, leading to confusion surrounding the identity of the species they had described. A decade later in 1813, G.H.E. Muhlenberg noticed the affinities between the two previous authors' work and transferred Walter's two species to Michaux's new genus, yielding a combinatio nova for each, namely Arundinaria gigantea (Walt.) Muhl. and Arundinaria tecta (Walt.) Muhl.. Muhlenberg considered the genus to consist of these two species in addition to Arundinaria macrosperma Michx.. After over a century, A. S. Hitchcock reviewed the taxonomic state of the North American bamboos in 1951. He interpreted Michaux's Arundinaria macrosperma Michx. as a synonym of Walter's Arundinaria gigantea (Walt.) Muhl., reducing the genus to two species.

Meanwhile, many similar Asian and even African bamboos were placed in Arundinaria under broad concepts for the group. These interpretations include a number of Old World genera such as Bashania, Oligostachyum and Sarocalamus. More outdated systems included the large genera Fargesia and Sasa, giving the genus upwards of 400 species. When Asian taxa are included would be the only bamboo genus to occur in both the Old and New Worlds.

By the late 20th century, Floyd Alonzo McClure's 1973 survey of Arundinaria was widely considered authoritative, and included only one species, Arundinaria gigantea. Most recently, in 2006 researchers from Iowa State University and the University of North Carolina recognised and described a third species, Arundinaria appalachiana Triplett, Weakley & L.G. Clark. The plants that form this species were previously thought to form part of the natural genetic diversity of Arundinaria gigantea (Walt.) Muhl., but upon in depth analysis using modern phylogenetic methods based on morphology and amplified fragment length polymorphisms, the researchers determined that the canes form three species.Phylogenetic studies in 2006 using molecular and morphological evidence have suggested that the genus forms three natural species confined to the southeastern United States.

See also

• Canebrakes

External links

• Description of Arundinaria