Arthrostylidium schomburgkii (R.W.Bennett) Munro
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Authority
Maguire, Bassett & Wurdack, John J. 1964. The botany of the Guayana Highland--Part V. Mem. New York Bot. Gard. 10: 1-278.
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Family
Poaceae
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Scientific Name
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Description
Species Description - Weak-stemmed clump bamboo; mature culms 40-50 feet long, first internode commonly 10-15 feet long, usually 5-8 culms per clumps.
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Discussion
Arundinaria schomburglcii Bennett in E. H. Schomburgk, Trans. Linn. Soc. 18: 562. 1841.
It appears, from the records at present available (Jour. N. Y. Bot. Gard. 50: 164. 1949), that the Maguires were the first to collect flowering material of this interesting bamboo since the discovery and collection of the plant by Robert H. Schomburgk on his last expedition to Guiana, 120 years ago.
The formal Latin description by which Bennett (1. c.) established the name of the plant is extremely short, but it is preceded by a very full enumeration of technical characteristics recorded by Schomburgk (Trans. Linn. Soc. 18: 559, 560. 1841) which served, in part at least, as the basis of the Latin diagnosis with which Munro (Trans. Linn. Soc. 26: 41, 42. 1868) accompanied his transfer of the specific name of the plant from Arundinaria to Arthrostylidium. The following details in Schomburgk's account, omitted from Munro's treatment, are deemed worthy of repetition here: '' The Maiongcong and Guinau Indians, whom the Spaniards called Maquiritares, conducted us to that part of Marawacca (a high mountain which terminates in an almost perpendicular wall of sandstone) where the plant grows. It is a day's journey from a Maiongcong settlement on the river Cuyaca, from whence the hospitable and good-natured savages showed us the beaten track. After having ascended Mount Marawacca, to about 3500 feet above the Indian village, the traveller follows a small mountain-stream, on the banks of which the Curas or Curatas, as the Indians call these reeds, grow in dense tufts. They form generally clusters of from fifty to one hundred, which are pushed forth, as in many other species of that tribe, by a strong, jointed subterranean rootstock."
The disproportionate elongation of the first internode of the culms, generally assumed to be peculiar to this bamboo, occurs also in a number of other species of this and other Western Hemisphere bamboo genera. Another notable feature of this plant, shown by both the herbarium specimens and examples of the blowguns brought back by the Maguires, is the occurrence, immediately above the long first internode, of two nodes without an intervening internode, the consecutive sheath scars being only about 10 mm distant from each other. The formation of culm sheaths and of branch complements at such congested nodes is distichous, and normal in other respects as well. The congestion of nodes (suppression of internodes) in conjunction with elongated internodes occurs also in a number of other species of diverse bamboo genera of the Western Hemisphere, but apparently it has not hitherto been referred to in published accounts pertaining to this group of plants.
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Distribution
Locally abundant in cloud forest on upper talus, northeast face of Cerro Marahuaca, alt. 1500-1800 m., 3 May 1949, Amazonas, Venezuela, Bassett Maguire & Bassett Maguire, Jr. 29162.
Venezuela South America|