Flora of New Zealand Series

Short with rhizomes extensively running, sometimes forming large stands but not dense clumps. Culm 1-3 m, permanently light green and ± concolorous or very strongly mottled and blotched dark purplish brown. Culm-sheath glaucous-white when young, at maturity obscuring much of the culm. Branches only from upper nodes. Leaf-sheath without oral bristles. Ligule 2-3 mm, truncate, densely puberulent. Leaf-blade ± horizontal, (10)-14-38 × (2)-4-9 cm, elliptic, narrowly ovate-elliptic, or lanceolate-elliptic, abaxially glaucous or glaucescent, glabrous, tessellate, adaxially shining deep green. Inflorescence of small panicles, each composed of a few short racemes, 2-4 cm. Spikelets 10-14 mm, 5-10-flowered. Lemmas 10-14 mm, tessellate.

N.: Wanganui (base of St John's Hill and Kowhai Park); S.: North Canterbury (Rangiora). Old and neglected gardens and parks, in and around shrubberies or bamboo plantations.

Naturalised from Japan, south Korea, Sakhalin Id.

Another sp. S. veitchii (Carrière) Rehder, of similar habit and form to S. palmata, has white-margined leaves which eventually become pale brown after maturity, and is cultivated occasionally but has not been reported wild. Sasa palmata last flowered in N.Z. in the second half of the 1960s and first half of the 1970s. Flowering was then widespread.

The name Sasa senanensis forma nebulosa (Makino) Rehder is incorrectly applied to a form of S. palmata with dark mottled culms. In the St John's Hill population of S. palmata, the culms were sometimes uniformly light green and sometimes dark-mottled, this being unconnected with age.

This sp. has also been known in N.Z. as Bambusa palmata Burb.