Bambusoideae in India: An Updated Enumeration

Crossref, Index Copernicus International (ICI), Directory of Research Journal Indexing (DRJI), Scientific Indexing Services (SIS), CiteFactor, Bamboo a giant, fast-growing, wood like grass appears to be the most successful and diverse conspicuous group of plants belonging to the sub family Bambusoideae of Poaceae. Bamboos have strong adaptability and are distributed widely in varied habitats. They are one of the earth’s oldest and most precious plant materials and have benefited human societies since time immemorial. They form an important group of plants that play a vital role in the economy and life of the people in many Asian, African and American countries. Bamboos play a key role in the rural economy of India. Due to the special physical characteristics attributed to bamboo, it has a glorious past and a promising future as part of the solution to 21st century challenges. Globally, bamboo is being targeted for livelihood development and alleviation of both environment and social problems in such a way that it can rightly be called the plant of the century.


INTRODUCTION
The very first mention of bamboo in literature dates back to 300 BC in a letter from Alexander the Great to Aristotle. The first pre-Linnaean scientific writer on Indian bamboos was van Rheede, the then Dutch Governor of Malabar, who described one species namely 'Ily' in his Hortus Malabaricus Vol. I, presently known as Bambusa bambos and two species viz., 'Beesha' and 'Nola-ily' in Vol. V which are presently known as Ochlandra scriptoria and O. travancorica respectively. However, Linnaeus in his 1 st edition of Species Plantarum mentioned only one species as Arundo bambos, now referable to Bambusa bambos. In 1789 the first bamboo genus viz., "Bambos" was scientifically described by Retzius on the basis of a single species Bambos arundinacea, now called Bambusa bambos. In the same year the generic name "Bambusa" was proposed by Schreber with the generic name "Bambos" as its synonym. Seven species viz., Bambusa bambos, B. stricta, B. tulda, B. balcooa, B. baccifera, B. spinosa and B. nana were enumerated in 'Hortus Benghalensis' by William Roxburgh (1814). It was in 1815 for the first time, that bamboos were treated in separate class in grass systematics by Charles Kunth, where he placed the bamboos in "Gramina Bambusacea" Class X of his treatment. The work of Christian Nees von Esenbeck (1835) was the first taxonomic monograph for bamboos. Russian botanist Franz Ruprecht (1839) published a monograph on bamboos where he placed 67 species of woody bamboos, including 18 from Indo-Malayan region, in two groups. The excellent monograph by Colonel Munro (1868) covering the bamboos of the world, was more complete and introduced a new section Bacciferae. He enumerated 219 species including 70 species from Indo-Malayan region under 20 genera, placed in three sub-tribes. In his Forest Flora of Burma, Kurz (1877) described 30 species. In 1881, George Bentham in his classic paper 'Notes on Gramineae' proposed four subtribes of bamboos adopting the concept of Nees (1835) and Munro (1868) with slight modifications in names and ranks.
The monumental work of James S. Gamble (1896) was the most complete monograph on Indian bamboos. It enumerated 115 species of 15 genera under 4 subtribes proposed by Bentham (1881), occurring in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Malaya and Sri Lanka. Brandis (1906) in his Indian Trees, listed 14 genera and 108 species. This was followed by monographic work of Camus (1913) which included the bamboos of India and China. Blatter (1929) presented a systematic analysis and arrangement of Indian bamboos. He added 24 new species from India since Gamble's (1896) publication. Majumdar's enumeration of Indian bamboos was published in  where he treated several species under synonyms and described 91 species under 18 genera including 8 new species and 1 new genus. Besides new taxa, he proposed several combinations. Thirty Seven Bamboos Growing in India by Bennet & Gaur (1990) aided with the coloured illustrations of the bamboos growing in FRI Dehradun arboretum is a useful attempt for field identification.
The first 'monograph' on bamboos of India after independence by D.N. Tiwari (1992), contains description, distribution, flowering records and uses of 129 species under 23 genera, including indigenous as well as cultivated species. The work of Negi and Naithani (1994) provides useful information of important bamboos of India in a concise form. The recent monographic work on Indian bamboos is that of Seethalakshmi & Muktesh Kumar (1998), which is another compilation work based on literature and provides detail information on 128 species belonging to 18 genera.
In the taxonomic treatment of bamboos the system of classification adapted by Munro which was mainly based on the flowering structures, was followed by Gamble with some modifications. But since the flowering in bamboos is very rare and irregular and most of them die after flowering, making it difficult to collect a bamboo species in flower along with the important vegetative parts such as culmsheaths and leaves, the vegetative structures are being given more importance for the identification and classification by subsequent and recent workers. As a result, there have been more and often changes in Generic concept among the taxonomists. The larger heterogeneous groups have been split into many smaller genera, for example almost all species treated under genus Arundinaria have been transferred under Indocalamus, Himalayacalamus, Drepanostachyum, Borinda, Sinarundinaria, Yushania, Fargesia, Neomicrocalamus, Racemobambos, Thamnocalamus, Chimonocalamus, Sarocalamus etc. and the genus Arundinaria at present is having only 3 species worldwide (Vorontsova et al., 2016). Similarly the genera Cephalostachyum, Pseudostachyum and Teinostachyum were suggested to be merged with Schizostachyum by Holttum (1958) who proposed a classification system based on the structure of ovary and divided all the genera into four groups. The concept was agreed by Clayton and Renvoize (1989) and followed by subsequent workers Majumdar (1989), Tiwari (1992), Shukla (1996) and Seethalakshmi & Kumar (1998), but Dransfield & Widjaja (1995 was clear to keep all these genera separate and this idea was followed by Stapleton (2000) and most of the Asian workers. While describing Stapletonia a new genus authors are also of the opinion that these genera should be treated separately (Dash et al., 2009).
Subfamily Bambusoideae includes 1642 species including 1521 herbaceous species, worldwide (Vorontsova et al., 2016). During last 125 years after the monumental work of Gamble (1896), 3 new genera and more than 35 species new to Plantae Scientia, March 2019; Volume 01 Issue 06:99-117 science have been discovered and described from India, mostly North eastern region, Western Ghats and Andaman and Nicobar islands.

ENUMERATION
Present paper based on extensive taxonomic research on this group of plants for more than fifteen years from 2002 to 2018, enumerates total of 148 species and 6 varieties under 33 genera from India. It includes indigenous, widely cultivated and naturalized and the exotic species used particularly for ornamental purposes in landscaping gardens. It also enlists the species mentioned as occurring in India in previous works but found of doubtful occurrence in the present work. 15 genera are under Aruninariae and 18 are under Bambusiae [ Table:1]. However, here all the genera are cited alphabetically with current accepted name, followed by the basionym and other important synonynms. Type(s) of the name, followed by the vernacular names and the distribution of species in Indian states and in other countries are provided for each species.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
Present work based on extensive taxonomic research on this group of plants for more than fifteen years from 2002 to 2018, enumerates total of 148 species and 6 varieties under 33 genera from India including indigenous, widely cultivated and naturalized and the exotic species used particularly for ornamental purposes in landscaping gardens. It also includes the species mentioned as occurring in India in previous works but found of doubtful occurrence in the present work.