Identification and Classification of Indian Bamboos

Bamboo occurs in most parts of India except the desert and temperate region of the country. There are about 22 principal genera and nearly 136 species of bamboo reported from the country. Taxonomic identification of bamboo has been considered as “Waterloo” for the botanists, due to the non availability of reproductive parts of seeds. As various species of bamboo flower irregularly and after a long interval identification of bamboo is generally done on the basis of characters associated with vegetative parts. There are lot of variations in the characters of vegetative parts like culm sheaths, leaves, branching pattern, etc. Availability of these vegetative parts at different stages of growth of bamboo specially culm sheaths is also a problem. Considering these facts, it has been a pursuit of researchers working on bamboo to find out a vegetative part which can serve to identify bamboo at any stage of its growth both at generic and specific level. This book presents in a concise form with full information of characters of leaf epidermis of all 22 genera and their representative species available in the country.