Crime Pays But Botany Doesn't18 Mar 2025

Neotropical Bamboos : What the &@#$ is Gregarious Monocarpy?

Episodes of this podcast are available Ad-Free on the Patreon at :
www.patreon.com/crimepaysbutbotanydoesnt

Dr. Lynn Clark studies neotropical bamboos - bamboos from the Americas - specifically the genus Chusquea, which is highly diverse in Central & South America, from the Pine-Oak Forests of Western Mexico all the way down to the temperate rainforests of Southern Chile. In this episode we talk about Chusquea, why it takes 30 years for some species to flower, why the woody bamboos are monocarpic (they flower once and then die, like Agave), how it can take decades for a clonal stand of Chusquea to flower, what the hell "gregarious monocarpy" is, how a stand of individuals "know" when to all flower at the same time, and more.

We also talk about the enormous bamboo species Guadua angustifolia, which can reach heights of 30 meters (90 feet), forms massive stands in the upper Amazon, and creates its own canopy ecosytem much like a redwood tree does.

Later in the podcast we discuss the 4 species of bamboo native to the United States, the genus Arundinaria , and how a dispersal event from Asia 25 million years ago may have originally introduced bamboos to the Americas.

Vocab words from this episode :

Arm Cells : the leaf blades of bamboos possess arm cells in the mesophyll, a character trait that sets them apart from grasses.

Gregarious Flowering or Gregarious Monocarpy : synchronous flowering. extremely cool and mysterious stuff.

Buergersiochloa bambusoides - New Guinea Disjunct

Raddiella vanessae - the world's smallest bamboo species

icneumonid wasps - wasps that have an ovipositor that is able to penetrate the hard culms of the giant Amazonian bamboo Guadua angustifolia

The strucutre and morphology of the buds at the nodes of bamboo are highly diagnostic for bamboos identification!

Chusquea from Western Mexico : Chusquea septentrionalis

Link to Guadua angustifolia video :
https://youtu.be/7v6nmIatSx0

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