Abstract

India is endowed with a large number of bamboo species and is perhaps having the world's one of the largest resources of bamboos. Due to the non-availability of flowers and irregular flowering phenomenon, the species identified by earlier workers have posed several problems with regard to the correct identity of the species. It has been observed that many of the workers have neglected the geo-climatic variations as a result of which several generic and specific delimitations among the Indian bamboosare confusing, it is also noted that most of the genera described by earlier workers have been treated congeneric with one taxon or the other. Therefore, the reports on the number of taxa occurring in the respective localities considerably vary. There are over 1575 species under 111 genera (Ohrnberger, 1999) of bamboos distributed in the tropical, subtropical and temperate regions of the world. In India, so far, 128 species belonging to 18 genera are known to occur. They are distributed mainly in the geographic zones such as, Western Himalayas, Eastern Himalayas including Northeast India, Peninsular India and Andaman and Nicobar Islands. Peninsular India is one of the richest domiciles of native bamboos, second to the Eastern regions. So far, 32 species and two varieties spread over eight genera are known to occur in the region. Of these, 22 species and two varieties belonging to six genera, namely Bambusa, Dendrocalamus, Ochlandra, Oxytenanthera, Schizostachyum and Sinarundinaria are native to Kerala. In the present study detailed taxonomic account of the genera, Dendrocalamus, Oxytenanthera, Schizostachyum and Sinarundinaria is provided. Some of the salient findings of the study are the following; one species is added to the genus Dendrocalamus as a new combination Dendrocalamus stocksii, formerly known under Oxytenanthera-Pseudoxytenanthera complex. The lectotypification of Dendrocalamus stocksii, D. colletianus, D. callostachyus and D. longispathus, and neotypication of D. stictus, the type species of the genus, have been carried out. Some of the species under Dendrocalamus such as, D. sahinii, and D. somdevai are treated as conspecific with D. hamiltonii and therefore synonymised under it. Dendrocalamus sericeus is also conspecific with D. strictus. The genus Pseudoxytenanthera is synonimised under Oxytenanthera with two species, O. bourdillonii and O. monodelpha. The lectotypification of O. bourdilonii has been carried out. The generic status of Schizostachyum has been critically examined and three species from Andaman Islands alone are retained under this genus along with the two new taxa described. Schizostachyum rogersii is relocated after a gap of 98 years from the type locality and the lectotypification of the species was carried out. The position of Indian Arundinoid bamboos is still not clear owing to the complexity of the group and unless further studies using molecular techniques and re-evaluation are done, the exact position of Indian genera under this group will remain ambiguouswith regards to the generic status of different taxa included under the subtribe Arundinarinae. The observations made during the present study have been communicated to the International Bamboo Taxonomists for their expert comments and hence, the detailson the genera (Arundinaria - Sinarundinaria Complex) are excluded from this report