Arthrostylidium

Arthrostylidium is a genus of herbaceous plants belonging to the Poaceae family. It is native to America where it is found in the Caribbean, Venezuela and Suriname, the Amazon and the Andes.

Description

These are short to medium-sized bamboos, without thorns; with pachymorphic rhizomes. Woody, cylindrical stems, almost solid to generally fistulous, erect or semi-climbing and drooping; nodes near mid-stem branching from a single bud, covered by a pair of flattened bracts; primary branch with an internode bulge below branch insertion; branches few to many in a flabellate group from middle and upper stem nodes, rarely solitary, the primary usually longer. Leaves on stems with erect blades. Branch leaves with short, flattened pseudopetioles; blades flattened, lanceolate, without pronounced veins at the corners. Inflorescence usually a bilateral raceme, rarely a racemose unilateral panicle. Spikelets sessile or subsessile; glumes 1-2; lower floret sterile; fertile florets several, bisexual, cleft; rachilla ending in a reduced sterile floret; lodicules 3; stamens 3; stigmas 2. Fruit a caryopsis.

Taxonomy

The genus was described by Franz Josef Ruprecht and published in Bambuseae 27. 1839. The type species is: Arthrostylidium cubense

Species