''Cathariostachys madagascariensis'', the Madagascar giant bamboo or in Malagasy language, is a

bamboo Bamboos are a diverse group of evergreen perennial flowering plants making up the subfamily Bambusoideae of the grass family Poaceae. Giant bamboos are the largest members of the grass family. The origin of the word "bamboo" is uncertain, bu ...

species found in

Madagascar Madagascar (; mg, Madagasikara, ), officially the Republic of Madagascar ( mg, Repoblikan'i Madagasikara, links=no, ; french: République de Madagascar), is an island country in the Indian Ocean, approximately off the coast of East Africa ...

Description

The culms are tall and erect, usually between but occasionally reaching up to ; with arching or drooping upper sections often leaning on nearby trees or vegetation for partial support. Culm diameters vary between 5 and 8 (up to 12) cm in diameter with internodes between 40 and 60 cm. Young shoots are pale to purplish green and covered with sharp, stiff, black to brown hairs. The rhizomes have very long, narrow necks, long, which help it to spread much more rapidly than most clumping forms of bamboo. Shoots are quite bitter and have high concentrations of cyanide. Flowers are both determinant and hemispherical, an unusual form for bamboos.

Range and habitat

C. ''madagascariense'' is endemic to the interior of Madagascar and can be found in lower

montane forests Montane ecosystems are found on the slopes of mountains. The alpine climate in these regions strongly affects the ecosystem because temperatures fall as elevation increases, causing the ecosystem to stratify. This stratification is a crucial f ...

, at forest margins, in disturbed forest, or in areas of open ground at elevations between . It is found principally in the central (Analamazaotra and around Moramunga, east of the capital Antananarivo) and southeast (

Ranomafana National Park Ranomafana National Park is in the southeastern part of Madagascar in Haute Matsiatra and Vatovavy. With more than 41,600 hectares (161 square miles) of tropical rainforest, it is home to several rare species of flora and fauna including the ...

and around Ifanadiana) regions where it receives sufficient rainfall.

Ecology

It is the main food source for several species of

bamboo lemur The bamboo lemurs or gentle lemurs are the lemurs in genus ''Hapalemur''. These medium-sized primates live exclusively on Madagascar. Etymology Bamboo lemurs were first described by French zoologist Isidore Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire in 1851. Compar ...

s, the only primates to subsist principally on bamboo. The destruction of the ''C. madagascarensis'' habitat due to slash and burn agriculture and over harvesting of natural stands has drastically reduced the range of both the greater bamboo lemur and especially the

golden bamboo lemur The golden bamboo lemur (''Hapalemur aureus''), or in Malagasy, is a medium-sized bamboo lemur endemic to south-eastern Madagascar. Description The golden bamboo lemur is crepuscular i.e. is a most active at dawn and dusk. It is about the siz ...

. It is unknown how the lemurs can process the high amounts of

cyanide Cyanide is a naturally occurring, rapidly acting, toxic chemical that can exist in many different forms. In chemistry, a cyanide () is a chemical compound that contains a functional group. This group, known as the cyano group, consists of ...

, particularly in its growing shoots, without any harm.

Taxonomy

It was originally classified as a new species of ''Cephalostachys'' by A. Camus in 1925. In 1998, in part due to the prior encouragement of the late Dr. T.R. Soderstrom of the Smithsonian, S. Dransfield reexamined the classification of several bamboos from Madagascar. Dr. S. Dransfield determined that, although sharing many similar characteristics with ''Cephalostachys'', ''C. capitat''a and ''C. madagariensis'' are distinct from ''Cephalostachys''. She placed both in the new genus ''Carthariostachys''.Soejatmi Dransfield. “Valiha and Cathariostachys, Two New Bamboo Genera (Gramineae-Bambusoideae) from Madagascar.” Kew Bulletin, vol. 53, no. 2, 1998, pp. 375–397. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/4114503. Accessed 27 Sept. 2020

References

External links

{{Taxonbar, from=Q2271851 madagascariensis Plants described in 1998 Endemic flora of Madagascar Flora of the Madagascar subhumid forests Taxa named by Aimée Antoinette Camus