Flora of New Zealand Series

Small with slender running rhizomes, sometimes plant forming dense stands. Culm 30-60 cm, green, very slender. Culm-sheaths green; oral bristles present. Branches 1-2 at middle and lower nodes or often culms unbranched. Leaf-sheath glabrous except on margins. Ligule very small. Leaf-blade usually 7-18 × 0.6-1.3 cm, narrow lanceolate, acuminate, dark green with prominent longitudinal white or pale cream stripes or bands of varying widths, abaxially uniformly pubescent.

N.: Wanganui, sandy roadside near airport; Rotorua, Lake Okareka, roadside by old quarry.

Naturalised.

Known in Japan only in cultivation.

Pleioblastus variegatus is not as common in cultivation as P. auricomus but both have almost certainly escaped in localities other than those recorded here. Flowers not reported in N.Z.

Also known in N.Z. as Arundinaria fortunei (Van Houtte) Rivière and A. variegatus (Miq.) Makino.

INCERTAE SEDIS

A very small bamboo cultivated at Lincoln in 1981 from a garden escape at Patutahi, Gisborne (CHR 367710), may be P. humilis (Mitford) Nakai. The material consists of one flower-bearing and several non-flowering culms, all under 40 cm high. The glarbous, uniformly green, leaf-blade and glabrous leaf-sheath (excepting oral bristles), distinguish it from the spp. of Pleioblastus treated here.