Arundinaria gigantea | |
---|---|
Grouping of Arundinaria gigantea at Cane Ridge Meeting House in Kentucky, US | |
Scientific classification | |
Kingdom: | Plantae |
Clade: | Tracheophytes |
Clade: | Angiosperms |
Clade: | Monocots |
Clade: | Commelinids |
Order: | Poales |
Family: | Poaceae |
Genus: | Arundinaria |
Species: | A. gigantea |
Binomial name | |
Arundinaria gigantea (Walter) Muhl. | |
Arundinaria gigantea is a species of bamboo known as giant cane (not to be confused with Arundo donax ), river cane, and giant river cane. It is endemic to the south-central and southeastern United States as far west as Oklahoma and Texas and as far north as New York. Giant river cane was economically and culturally important to indigenous people, with uses including as a vegetable and materials for construction and craft production. Arundinaria gigantea and other species of Arundinaria once grew in large colonies called canebrakes covering thousands of acres in the southeastern United States, but today these canebrakes are considered endangered ecosystems. [2] [3]
This bamboo is a perennial grass with a rounded, hollow stem which can exceed 7 cm (2.8 in) in diameter and grow to a height of 10 m (33 ft). It grows from a large network of thick rhizomes. The lance-shaped leaves are up to 30 cm (12 in) long and 4 cm (1.6 in) wide. The inflorescence is a raceme or panicle of spikelets measuring 4 to 7 cm (1.6 to 2.8 in) in length. An individual cane has a lifespan of about 10 years. [2] [4] Most reproduction is vegetative as the bamboo sprouts new stems from its rhizome. It rarely produces seeds and it flowers irregularly. R.S. Cocks [5] writing in 1908, stated that certain clumps of bamboo near Abita Springs, Louisiana had been blooming annually in the latter part of May for nine years. [6] Sometimes it flowers gregariously. [7] Some types of non-native bamboos are confused with this native cane. [8] Today river cane patches are significantly diminished from their previous size and extent. Before European settlers colonized North America, Native Americans used fire to encourage the growth of river cane, and canes at this time could reach three inches in diameter. [9]
During the last Glacial Maximum, the range of this plant was restricted to a narrow strip along the Gulf Coast. When the ice sheets retreated, it spread northward to its current range. [10]
This native plant is a member of several plant communities today, generally occurring as a component of the understory or midstory. It grows in pine forests dominated by loblolly, slash, longleaf, and shortleaf pine, and stands of oaks, cypress, ash, and cottonwood. Other plants in the understory include inkberry (Ilex glabra), creeping blueberry (Vaccinium crassifolium), wax myrtle (Morella cerifera), blue huckleberry (Gaylussacia frondosa), pineland threeawn (Aristida stricta), cutover muhly (Muhlenbergia expansa), little bluestem (Schizachyrium scoparium), and toothache grass (Ctenium aromaticum). Cane communities occur on floodplains, bogs, riparian woods, pine barrens and savannas, and pocosins. It grows easily in flooded and saturated soils. [2]
Cane is considered to be a fire dependent species. Canebrakes are maintained by a fire regime where intervals between burns range from 2–8 years. [11]
Giant cane has been documented as providing food and shelter for 70 species, including six butterfly species that depend almost exclusively on it for food. [12] An example of a butterfly that requires cane as a food plant is the southern pearly eye. [8] Canebrakes are an important habitat for the Swainson's, hooded, and Kentucky warblers, as well as the white-eyed vireo. The disappearance of the canebrake ecosystem may have contributed to the rarity and possible extinction of the Bachman's warbler, which was dependent upon it for nesting sites. [2] [13] Giant cane was also one of three major sources of food for passenger pigeons, and the disappearance of canebrakes may have helped cause its extinction. [12]
Giant cane may be prevented from growing by invasive plants like quackgrass that spread horizontally, but tall native plants such as big bluestem and ironweed have been reported to have a positive effect. [14]
Canebrakes declined after European settlement of the American southeast. Factors involved in the decline include the introduction of livestock such as cattle, which eagerly graze on the leaves. The cane was considered a good forage for the animals until overgrazing began to eliminate canebrake habitat. [2] Other reasons for the decline include the conversion of the land for agriculture [15] and fire suppression. [16]
There are many human uses for the cane. The Cherokee, particularly the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, [17] use this species in basketry. [18] The Cherokee historically maintained canebrakes with cutting and periodic burning, a practice which stopped with the European settlement of the land. [16] The elimination of cane habitat has nearly resulted in the loss of the art of basketmaking, [17] [19] which is important for the economy of the Cherokee today. [20] Canebrakes have been reduced in area by at least 98% and cane may take 20 years to grow to a sufficient size to be used for traditional basketry. Because of this, Cherokee basketmakers nowadays often do not have access to the traditional material for making Cherokee baskets, which are considered some of the finest in the world. [21]
The art of river cane basketry is also important to the Choctaw, whose artisans have faced similar problems due to the increasing disappearance of canebrakes. [22] The cane was also used by groups such as the Cherokee, Seminole, Chickasaw and Choctaw to make medicine, blowguns, bows and arrows, knives, spears, flutes, candles, walls for dwellings, [18] fish traps, sleeping mats, tobacco pipes, [20] and food. [12] River cane is an important symbol of the Choctaw nation because its significance to the nation's history and the numerous ways it provided for the survival of the Choctaw. [23]
In 2022, the Cherokee Nation signed an agreement with the National Park Service to allow collection of 76 culturally important plant species in the Buffalo River National Park in Arkansas, including A. gigantea. [24]
Giant cane is of interest due to its extraordinary capability to reduce both sediment loss and nitrate runoff when planted as a "buffer" between waterways and agricultural fields. A giant cane buffer zone can reduce nitrate pollution in ground water by 99%. [12] Stands of cane are superior even to forests as protective buffers around waterways, absorbing sediment and nitrate pollution and dramatically slowing the rate at which runoff enters the stream or river. [25]
Bamboos are a diverse group of mostly evergreen perennial flowering plants making up the subfamily Bambusoideae of the grass family Poaceae. Giant bamboos are the largest members of the grass family, in the case of Dendrocalamus sinicus individual culms reaching a length of 46 meters, up to 36 centimeters in thickness and a weight of up to 450 kilograms. The internodes of bamboos can also be of great length. Kinabaluchloa wrayi has internodes up to 2.5 meters in length. and Arthrostylidium schombergkii with lower internodes up to 5 meters in length, exceeded in length only by papyrus. By contrast, the culms of the tiny bamboo Raddiella vanessiae of the savannas of French Guiana are only 10–20 millimeters in length by about two millimeters in width. The origin of the word "bamboo" is uncertain, but it probably comes from the Dutch or Portuguese language, which originally borrowed it from Malay or Kannada.
Arundo is a genus of stout, perennial plants in the grass family.
Bachman's warbler is an extinct passerine migratory bird. This warbler was a migrant, breeding in swampy blackberry and cane thickets of the Southeastern and Midwestern United States and wintering in Cuba. There are some reports of the bird from the twenty-first century, but none are widely accepted. Some authorities accept a Louisiana sighting in August 1988 as confirmed, but the last uncontroversial sightings date to the 1960s.
Arundinaria is a genus of bamboo in the grass family the members of which are referred to generally as cane. Arundinaria is the only bamboo native to North America, with a native range from Maryland south to Florida and west to the southern Ohio Valley and Texas. Within this region Arundinaria canes are found from the Coastal Plain to medium elevations in the Appalachian Mountains.
Nastus is a genus of slender, erect, scrambling or climbing bamboos in the grass family. It is native to Southeast Asia, Papuasia, and certain islands in the Indian Ocean.
Basket weaving is the process of weaving or sewing pliable materials into three-dimensional artifacts, such as baskets, mats, mesh bags or even furniture. Craftspeople and artists specialized in making baskets may be known as basket makers and basket weavers. Basket weaving is also a rural craft.
Arundo donax is a tall perennial cane. It is one of several so-called reed species. It has several common names including giant cane, elephant grass, carrizo, arundo, Spanish cane, Colorado river reed, wild cane, and giant reed. Arundo and donax are respectively the old Latin and Greek names for reed.
Arundinaria appalachiana, commonly known as hill cane, is a woody bamboo native to the Appalachian Mountains in the southeastern United States. The plant was elevated to the species level in 2006 based on new morphological and genetic information and was previously treated as a variety of Arundinaria tecta. The shortest member of its genus, hill cane ranges from 0.4–1.8 meter tall with a habit ranging from diffuse to pluri-caespitose. It is one of only three temperate species of bamboo native to North America. Hill cane is common on dry to mesic sites on upland slopes, bluffs and ridges in oak-hickory forests, which distinguishes it from other species in the genus: Arundinaria gigantea typically appears along perennial streams, while Arundinaria tecta is found in swamps and other very wet areas.
The Canebrake is a historical region of west-central Alabama in the United States, which was once dominated by thickets of Arundinaria, a type of bamboo, or cane, native to North America. It was centered on the junction of the Tombigbee and Black Warrior rivers, near Demopolis, and extended eastward to include large parts of Hale, Marengo, and Perry counties. Portions of Greene and Sumter were also often included.
Cane or caning may refer to:
Cane is any of various tall, perennial grasses with flexible, woody stalks from the genera Arundinaria, and Arundo.
A. gigantea may refer to:
Fargesia murielae, the umbrella bamboo, is a species of flowering plant in the family Poaceae. It is a large, clump-forming evergreen bamboo, closely resembling Fargesia nitida in the same genus, but with yellow canes.
Thamnocalamus tessellatus is a species of bamboo belonging to the family Poaceae, and native to the high mountains of South Africa, Lesotho and Eswatini, lying along the south-eastern part of South Africa. It is found in the Amatola Mountains, the Bamboesberg, which is named for it, and the Drakensberg. Its generic name means "bushy reed", while the specific name means "tiled", an allusion to the rectangular pattern of veins on the leaves. Its common names include mountain bamboo, and Bergbamboes and Wildebamboes in Afrikaans.
Buffalo Valley is an unincorporated town in far western Putnam County, Tennessee, United States. The zipcode is: 38548. The town could be described as a ghost town.
A canebrake or canebreak is a thicket of any of a variety of Arundinaria grasses: A. gigantea, A. tecta and A. appalachiana. As a bamboo, these giant grasses grow in thickets up to 24 feet (7.3 m) tall. A. gigantea is generally found in stream valleys and ravines throughout the southeastern United States. A. tecta is a smaller stature species found on the Atlantic and Gulf Coastal Plains. Finally, A. appalachiana is found in more upland areas at the southern end of the Appalachian Mountains. Cane does not do well on sites that meet wetland classification; instead canebrakes are characteristic of moist lowland, floodplain areas that are not as saturated as true wetlands.
The Battle of Great Cane Brake was a skirmish fought on December 22, 1775, during the American Revolutionary War in what was then Ninety-Six District, South Carolina, modern Greenville County.
Arundinaria tecta, or switchcane, is a bamboo species native to the Southeast United States, first studied in 1813. It serves as host to several butterfly species. The species typically occurs in palustrine wetlands, swamps, small to medium blackwater rivers, on deep peat in pocosins, and in small seepages with organic soils. The species is only known to occur in the Atlantic Plain, Gulf Coastal Plain, and Mississippi Embayment, though it was earlier thought to exist in the Piedmont and Southern Appalachians as well. Specimens from the uplands are now thought to be a separate but morphologically similar species, Arundinaria appalachiana.
Muhlenbergia expansa, also known as cutover muhly, is a species of plants in the grass family native to the Southeastern coast of the United States.
{{citation}}
: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)