马岭竹 ma ling zhu

Culms 8–10 m, 4–6 cm in diam., basally straight or slightly flexuose, apically suberect or slightly drooping; internodes 25–30 cm, initially thinly white powdery, glabrous except for basal ca. 5 nodes with rings of gray-white silky hairs below sheath scar; wall thick; branching from ca. 2nd node up. Branches usually solitary at basal nodes, 3 to many at mid-culm and distal nodes, central 3 branches dominant; branchlets on lower branches usually forming weak or sometimes sharp, tough thorns. Culm sheaths slightly persistent, ribbed-striate when dry, abaxially glabrous, apex obliquely truncate and arched; auricles unequal, oblong or sometimes narrowly lanceolate, adaxially and marginally with undulate slender setae; larger auricle slightly slanted downward and extending downward, ca. 5 mm, ca. 2 × size of smaller one; ligule arched or subtruncate, 3–4 mm, margin irregularly dentate and ciliolate; blade deciduous, erect, triangular or narrowly triangular, base slightly arched, narrowed, to 2/3 width of sheath apex. Leaf blade narrowly lanceolate, 8–15 × 1–1.7 cm, abaxially very sparsely pubescent or subglabrous, adaxially glabrous. Inflorescence unknown.

* Open fields on hills. Guangdong (cultivated), Hainan.