#sandcane

[rjalker]

anyways, yesterday, some scientists from Alabama drove seven hours to come and see the native bamboo that I found when I told them that it was flowering for a third time :)

So now they have DNA samples from multiple in the area and they're going to sequence them and they'll get back to me on what species it is or if it's just a new weird one that needs to be described lol

They also managed to find who owns the property so they're going to be contacting them, hopefully they have the authority to get it protected and properly managed and accessible for indigenous people!!

[rjalker]

Public domain. Taken Feb 28 2026

Many of these stalks (and thus, the whole individual) are flowering for at least the second year in the row, including specialized flower stalks that emerge directly from the ground and do nothing but flower.

Please *do* put these on Wikipedia, it confuses me

(image description start. A collection of photos of American bamboo flowers and branch spikes. Most of the flowers are reddish purple, with some green edging, and pale yellow tassels hanging out. The branch spikes look like thick needles, in either purple to match the flowers, or green. One photo shows a segmented rhizome above ground, that is purple, and another shows the base of a cluster of thick branches, with multiple horizontal stripes. Image description end.)

@headspace-hotel

[rjalker]

A lot of people assume that you can tell the difference between Arundinaria tecta and Arundinaria gigantea simply by the the size of the leaves... That is not correct.

How big the leaves are is dependent on the age of the shoot in question. Baby shoots have the biggest leaves. Older shoots have the smallest.

This is the exact same plant, just with shoots of different ages. The one with the big leaves is less than a year old. The one with the smaller leaves is 3+ years old.

[ID: A crapped screenshot from a video, looking up at the sky at the undersides of two bamboo shoots. One is slightly shorter and has very large leaves, The other is taller, with many many much smaller leaves. End ID.]

[ID. A photo showing two green bamboo leaves on the ground, which is covered in dried brown leaves of various species. One leaf is extremely long and wide, the other is much shorter and skinnier. End ID.]

[rjalker]

Discovering never before documented plant behavior apparently. This would have been documented before now if anyone were paying attention.

[rjalker]

Somebody purposely grow some river cane in super muddy dirt and see what happens.

Air canals in the rhizome don't actually seem to be a consistent identifying trait of Sandcane (My name for Arundinaria tecta* cuz I'm not calling it after a fucking whip when they're literal gated communities for white people down here literally proudly calling themselves plantations).

The only plants I've found that have air canals in the rhizome are ones that are waterlogged and in extremely muddy ground almlst all or all times of the year. And I check the rhizomes of almost every single one that I find.

This one came out of mud in a ditch next to a road, it was actually uncovered by erosion, and already partially broken off.

[image description start. Four photos showing a rhizome, or root of a native bamboo plant, which has been chopped cleanly with clippers. The rhizomes inside is off-white, with a small hole in the center, a more solid surface in a circle around that, and around the very edge is an outer ring with tall slits space evenly around, forming air canals to help the plant transfer oxygen. Image description end.]

I put an asterisk after tecta, because there's some doubt about that. In the "either people have been really bad at describing this species, or this is an undescribed species" way.

[rjalker]

More flower buds, and open flowers on the native bamboo!!!! February 10th 2026!!!!

Get out there right now to your local native bamboo patch, find woody stems with no sheath leaves still attached, and look closely at all of the branches, and look at the ground around them too!

Most of these start out purple, but on some of them they're just green already!

here's this year's new flower (green) next to some possible seeds that are still on the plant from last year! Which might mean that this one also flowered in September!

[Image description start. A cropped photo showing Sanecane flowers, emerging from tan stems. One is tan and dried out, with small holes in it, the other is fresh green with a purple ting around the edges. Image description end.]

[rjalker]

Didn't find any new bamboo flowers today, but the undescribed species continues to be... Undescribed.

[rjalker]

My feet and my leg hurt so much lol but worth it.

New to me flowering path of Arundinaria native bamboo.

The conservation team that visited today unfortunately does not have enough time to collect samples from these ones as well, but they got them from the main ones (I also donated a successful clone, and the one seedling so far, since they can take care of it better than we can and it will serve everybody) so hooray!!

Once again, if you live somewhere that you think there might be native bamboo, get out there and look for flowers. Here's what they might look like. They might also be super bright purple. They might be green. I don't know what determines the color, and neither does anybody else!

These ones are on very tiny little plants with stems not even the size of a pencil, not even a little pencil. The plant doesn't have to be big to flower. Go look.

These photos are public domain. You are explicitly encouraged to download them and re-upload them, you just can't claim you took the picture.

[Image description start. More than a dozen photos of flower buds on native bamboo, or Rivercane / Sandcane. The flowers are a mixture of dark purple and green, emerging directly from dark reddish purple stems, or tan-sheathed branches. A fabric ruler is used to show that one of the flowers is 4 cm tall so far. Image description end.]