Sasa Makino & Shibata
From a Japanese word for small bamboos.
Including Neosasamorpha Tatewaki, Nipponobambusa Muroi, Sasaella Mak., Sasamorpha Nakai
Habit, vegetative morphology. Small to medium, shrubby perennial. The flowering culms leafy. Culms 100–400 cm high; woody and persistent; branched above. Primary branches/mid-culm node 1 (rarely 3, with one dominant). Culm sheaths persistent. Culm internodes hollow. Rhizomes leptomorph. Plants unarmed. Leaves not basally aggregated; with auricular setae. Leaf blades broadly lanceolate, or elliptic (large); broad (acuminate); pseudopetiolate; cross veined; disarticulating from the sheaths; rolled in bud; an unfringed membrane.
Reproductive organization. Plants bisexual, with bisexual spikelets; with hermaphrodite florets.
Inflorescence. Inflorescence determinate; paniculate; open; spatheate (the long peduncle covered by sheaths); a complex of ‘partial inflorescences’ and intervening foliar organs. Spikelet-bearing axes persistent. Spikelets not secund; pedicellate.
Female-fertile spikelets. Spikelets compressed laterally; disarticulating above the glumes; disarticulating between the florets. Rachilla prolonged beyond the uppermost female-fertile floret; the rachilla extension with incomplete florets.
Glumes present; two; shorter than the adjacent lemmas; similar (scarious). Spikelets with incomplete florets. The incomplete florets distal to the female-fertile florets. The distal incomplete florets merely underdeveloped. Spikelets without proximal incomplete florets.
Female-fertile florets 3–13. Lemmas decidedly firmer than the glumes (with tessellate venation); not becoming indurated; non-carinate; more than 5-nerved. Palea present; 2-keeled. Lodicules present; 3; free. Stamens 6. Ovary glabrous; without a conspicuous apical appendage. Styles fused. Stigmas 3 (plumose).
Fruit, embryo and seedling. Fruit longitudinally grooved. Endosperm containing compound starch grains.
Abaxial leaf blade epidermis. Costal/intercostal zonation conspicuous. Papillae present (abundant); costal and intercostal (present over minor bundles, lacking over the large ones). Intercostal papillae over-arching the stomata (and largely obscuring them); several per cell (large, circular, thick walled and refractory, a single row per cell). Mid-intercostal long-cells rectangular; having markedly sinuous walls (the sinuosity fairly fine, even). Microhairs present; elongated; clearly two-celled (the basal cells very long); panicoid-type. Stomata common. Subsidiaries papillate; dome-shaped. Intercostal short-cells not apparent in this highly papillate epidermis. With costal and intercostal, scattered prickles. Costal short-cells conspicuously in long rows. Costal silica bodies present and well developed; saddle shaped (large).
Transverse section of leaf blade, physiology. C3; XyMS+. Mesophyll with adaxial palisade; with arm cells; with fusoids. The fusoids external to the PBS. Leaf blade adaxially flat. Midrib conspicuous; having complex vascularization. The lamina symmetrical on either side of the midrib. Bulliforms present in discrete, regular adaxial groups; in simple fans (these large). All the vascular bundles accompanied by sclerenchyma. Combined sclerenchyma girders present (with all the bundles); forming ‘figures’ (I’s and T’s). Sclerenchyma all associated with vascular bundles.
Cytology. Chromosome base number, x = 12. 2n = 48 (sample including Sasamorpha and Sasaella). 4 ploid. Chromosomes ‘small’.
Taxonomy. Bambusoideae; Bambusodae; Bambuseae.
Distribution, ecology, phytogeography. About 50 species; eastern Asia.
Holarctic. Boreal. Euro-Siberian and Eastern Asian. Siberian.
Hybrids. May hybridize with Semiarundinaria (×Hibanobambusa Maruyama and Okamura).
Rusts and smuts. Rusts — Stereostratum and Puccinia. Taxonomically wide-ranging species: Stereostratum corticoides, Puccinia longicornis, and Puccinia kusanoi. Smuts from Ustilaginaceae. Ustilaginaceae — Ustilago.
References, etc. Leaf anatomical: this project.
Special comments. Fruit data wanting.
Illustrations. • Abaxial epidermis of leaf blade
Cite this publication as: Watson, L., and Dallwitz, M. J. (1992 onwards). ‘Grass Genera of the World: Descriptions, Illustrations, Identification, and Information Retrieval; including Synonyms, Morphology, Anatomy, Physiology, Phytochemistry, Cytology, Classification, Pathogens, World and Local Distribution, and References.’ http://biodiversity.uno.edu/delta/. Version: 18th August 1999. Dallwitz (1980), Dallwitz, Paine and Zurcher (1993 onwards, 1998), and Watson and Dallwitz (1994), and Watson, Dallwitz, and Johnston (1986) should also be cited (see References).
