Arundinaria Michx., Fl. Bor.-Amer. 1:73. 1803. Gamble, Bambuseae Brit. Ind. 1.1896; Hook. f., Fl. Brit, Ind. 7:376. 1896; Parker, For. Fl. Punj. 529. 1918; Sultan & Stewart, Grasses W.Pak. 2:155. 1959; McClinkock & Amaral Franco in Tutin et al., Fl. Eur. 5:124. 1980.
Erect or climbing shrubs; culms slender; nodes usually rather prominent; internodes rather short; branches fasciculate from the nodes. Culm-sheaths thin, papery; imperfect blade narrow, subulate. Leaf-blades finally disarticulating from the sheaths, often with regular transverse veinlets. Inflorescence variable, paniculate or racemose. Spikelets 1-many-flowered, all bisexual or the uppermost reduced, cylindrical or ± compressed, often large, loose and linear; glumes 2, persistent, membranous to herbaceous, few- to many-nerved; lemma usually larger and exceeding the glumes, rounded on the back, herbaceous becoming chartaceous or coriaceous, 5-13-nerved, usually with transverse veinlets, obtuse, acute or acuminate; palea several-nerved, 2-keeled; lodicules 3; stamens 3, exceptionally as many as 6; style 1; stigmas 2-3. Caryposis oval or narrowly oblong, smooth, furrowed on the back, at maturity remaining enclosed within the lemma and palea.
A genus of about 150 species in warm temperate and subtropical regions of the world, but principally in Asia; a single species is reported from Pakistan.
The genus as defined above is rather polymorphic, but since many species are known only from vegetative material or from incomplete flowering specimens, it seems unwise to accept at present its division into the smaller groups proposed by Nakai (in J. Arnold Arbor. 6: 152-3. 1925) and others until it is possible to study the genus more thoroughly.
