花眉竹 hua mei zhu

Culms 8–12 m, 4–5 cm in diam., basally slightly flexuose, apically erect or slightly drooping; internodes ca. 30 cm, initially thinly white powdery, glabrous, lower ones with yellow-green or pale green stripes; wall thick; nodes flat, lower ones with a ring of gray-white silky hairs below and above sheath scar, basal 1 or 2 nodes with short aerial roots; branching from 3rd or 4th node up. Branches several to many per node with central dominant. Culm sheaths deciduous, leathery, ribbed-striate when dry, glabrous, margins densely ciliate, apex slightly asymmetrical, broadly arched; auricles unequal, undulate, wrinkled; larger auricle slightly slanted downward for 1/7–1/6 of sheath, oblong, 2.5–3 × ca. 1 cm, ends subrounded; smaller auricle suborbicular, ca. 1/2 size of larger; oral setae slender, undulate, densely covering margins of auricles; ligule 4–5 mm, margin irregular, finely dentate and laciniate, densely ciliolate; blade erect, slightly asymmetrical, ovate-triangular, base slightly rounded, then extending outward and joined with auricles for 4–5 mm, base nearly 2/3 as wide as sheath apex. Leaf blade linear or linear-lanceolate, 9–15 × 1–1.5 cm, abaxially densely pubescent, adaxially glabrous. Inflorescence not known from China.

Cultivated. Guangdong [native to Bangladesh and Myanmar].

The determination of Chinese gatherings as this species is doubtful.

The culms are used for scaffolding.