Phyllostachys aurea Rivière & C.Rivière
by W.R. Sykes
walking stick bamboo
Fairly dense thicket-forming with rhizomes running extensively. Culm usually 3-6 m (often taller in cultivation), glaucous when young, green during the first year, yellow afterwards, erect, with white waxy ring beneath nodes when young; nodes on some shoots congested and sometimes zigzag towards base; internodes swollen and often asymmetric. Culm-sheath light mauve-brown or pinkish brown, mottled dark purplish, especially towards apex; auricles and oral bristles 0; sheath-blade narrow linear, flat, often with greenish pink marginal band. Branches spreading widely to give an open network. Leaf-sheath with long oral bristles. Auricles 0. Ligule minutely puberulent. Leaf-blade usually 5-13-(15) × 0.7-2-(2.7) cm, lanceolate, abaxially glaucescent, acuminate.
N.: scattered in several places - North Auckland, Auckland City, Hamilton area and occasionally elsewhere in the Waikato, Bay of Plenty; K.: Raoul Id.
Naturalised from south-eastern China.
Phyllostachys aurea has been widely planted as far south as Canterbury but is not as aggressive there as in warmer areas. Flowering not reported for N.Z.
There are other spp. of Phyllostachys in N.Z. with yellow stems but P. aurea is easily recognisable by the swollen and asymmetric internodes and zigzag nodes in the lower part of some culms in a clump. The cultivated P. edulis (Carrière) Houz. 'Heterocycla' also has lower internodes on some culms strongly swollen on one side and grossly asymmetric, giving rise to zigzag nodes. However, the culm-sheaths are hairy abaxially in P. edulis but glabrous in P. aurea.
