Bambusa pallida Munro

Dendrocalamus criticus Kurz , Arundarbor pallida (Munro) Kuntze
Common Name: Bijuli, Bakhal, Burwal, Bijli, Jowa (Assam); Makal (Tripura), Bijli (Arunachal Pradesh), Pashipo, Pushee (Lapcha-Sikkim), Tenang (Meghalaya), Tesero, Watoi (Nagaland)

Habit
Culms : Tufted Height: 13-20m  Diameter:5-8cm  Culm Color: Olive green
Internode Length: 45 - 70cm  Culm Sheath Colour: 18-30cm long and 25cm broad, slightly attenuate upwards and truncate at top.Young blade 35cm long, triangular acuminatefrom a broad base covered with appressed white hairs; abaxial surface appressed black hairy, adaxial surface glabrous orsparsely hairy. Culm-sheaths fall off from bottom of the culms upwards within 15 days, before falling becomestraw-coloured, blades at first greenish, changing to straw colour within few days.

Length of Leaf: 10- 20cm  Breadth of Leaf : 1- 2 cm  Leaf Shape: Linear lanceolate

Habitat: Moist evergreen forest  Altitude: 700 -2000m  Soil: Sandy to clay loam soil

Native to: India, Burma, Thailand
Introduced to: Assam, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland,Tripura, Himachal, West Bengal, Orissa, Utter Pradesh, Kerala, Kernataka

Description of Inflorescence and Flower: large branching panicle, with spicate branchlets bearing heads with many sterile and few fertile spikelets; rachis fistular, that of branchlets slender, wiry, glabrous. Spikelets pale, 2.5-3 cm long,sometimes curved, bearing usually 1-2 small ovate-acute empty glumes, 1 male or gemmiparous glume, 3-8 fertileflowers, 3-5 imperfect ones gradually decreasing in size; rachilla short, club-shaped, ciliate at top; flowering glumeovate-acute, mucronate, many- nerved, glabrous, minutely pubescent within; palea much short, acute, 2-keeled, shortlyciliate on the keels, 3-5 veins between them; lodicules 3, oblong or narrowly obovate, two rather unequally sided, large,and the third acute, smaller, all somewhat thickened at base and veined. Stamens hardly exserted, anthers narrow,apiculate, with 1 or 2 long hairs or not. Ovary narrowly oblong, attenuate upwards into a hairy thickened style whichsoon branches into 3 plumose stigmas.
Flowering Cycle:   Flowering Reported:Bangladesh(1850), Assam(1890)

Propagation:Culm cuttings

Uses: Baskets, construction, plates, screens, toys, wall hangers

References: Seethalakshmi K. K, 1998; Manual for establishment and management of bamboo plantations, march 2005