Culms 1.5–4 m tall, 0.4–1 cm thick, often curved; internodes 14–20 cm, green, initially green, sometimes with purplish-brown patches later, white-waxy when young, densely and persistently so in a broad band below nodes, finely striate; nodes slightly raised. Culm sheaths shorter than the internode, glabrous, persistent; auricles and oral setae absent; blade small, lanceolate. Leaf sheaths glabrous, white-glaucous when young; auricles and oral setae absent; ligule conspicuous, truncate, to 3mm, glabrous, nearly entire; blade broad, 18–30 cm long, 5–8 cm wide, thick, coriaceous, glabrous, with 9–14 pairs of secondary veins and yellow midribs. Name from the Latin palmatus, ‘hand-like’, for the leaf blade arrangement, shared by all members of the genus but more noticeable in this species because of the large broad leaves.
Native to several parts of Japan and also frequently cultivated, Sasa palmata is very vigorous and invasive, and can become an impenetrable dense mass of sprawling older growth. The plants normally cultivated have irregular ‘nebulous’ brown markings or more uniform brown colouring on older culms and leaf sheaths when mature.
|