Thyrsostachys oliveri Gamble

Thyrsostachys regia (Munro) Bennet
Common Name: Thana-wa (Burmese): Mai-tong,Ura (Burma: Kachin); Phai-ruak-dam (Thailand), Lathi mula (Kerala), Thanawa (Burma), Kanak kaich, Busai, Nusai (Tripura)

Habit
Culms : Tufted Height: 15-25m  Diameter:5cm  Culm Color: Dull green or yellow
Internode Length: 40-60cm  Culm Sheath Colour: fibrous,imbricating at the base,green when young, turningorange and finally brown, persistent, clothed on the back with thick, white, stiff, pubescence, rounded at the top margins thin and ciliate; liguleca. 4 mm high, dentate; auricles 2, very small, triangular blade upto 23 cm long, 2-3 cm broad, recurved, awl-shaped,hairy on both surfaces. Young shoots cone shaped, orange mixed with light green colour, covered with white hairs bladenarrow erect

Length of Leaf: 15- 20cm  Breadth of Leaf : 1.2- 1.5cm  Leaf Shape: Linear- lanceolate

Habitat: Mixed deciduous forest  Altitude: 1500m  Soil: loamy soil

Native to: Myanmar
Introduced to: Nilambur (Wynad),Coimbatore

Description of Inflorescence and Flower: large compound curved,thyrsoid panicle, with usually one long and two shorter flower- bearing spikelets and one or more sterile ones; rachisflexuose, hairy, swollen at the top; bracts straw coloured, blunt; sheath 1.2-2.4 cm or more long, sometimes with adeciduous, green imperfect blade. Spikelets 1.5-2.5 cm, longer ones with long jointed rachis, shorter ones with veryshort joints; rachis hairy, flexouse; fertile flowers 2-3, with an uppermost rudimentary flower on a slender terminalrachilla; empty glumes 2, ovate-acute, ca. 1.3 cm, striate, many-nerved with conspicuous transverse veinlets, sparselyhairy outside; flowering glume similar, 2-5-nerved and hairy between the keels, divided often one-fourth of the waydown into long hairy cleft, glabrous except the acute tip, many-nerved; rachilla hairy; lodicules 2, lanceolate, acuminate,ciliate, very thin. Stamens long exserted, drooping; filaments purple; anthers yellow, the connective protruded into ablunt point. Ovary yellow, depressed-turbinate, stalked, surmounted by a long style, bearing three broad featherystigmas.
Flowering Cycle: 48-50 years  Flowering Reported:Myanmar(1891),Dehra Dun(1938),Haldwani(1962-63

Propagation:Culm cuttings, Tissue culture, branch cutting, rhizome planting

Uses: Construction, Baskets, handicrafts, slabs, poles, edible

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