Bambusa vulgaris

Stem (culm) is erect, up to 20 m tall, up to 10 cm in diameter, hollow, glossy green, yellow, or yellow with green stripes. Internodes are 20-45 cm long, with appressed dark hairs and white waxy when young, becoming glabrous, smooth and shiny with age. Nodes are slightly swollen, basal ones covered with aerial roots. Young shoots are dark brown to yellow-green. Branches arise from mid culm nodes upward, occasionally also at lower nodes, several to many at each node with primary branch dominant. Leaves are alternate, simple. Stem leaves with sheath up to 40 cm long, more or less broadly triangular, covered with appressed black or brown hairs; auricles 0.5-2 cm long, with pale brown bristles along the edges; ligule 3-8 mm long; blade broadly triangular, 4-15 cm × 5-10 cm. Sheaths are deciduous. Branch leaves with sheath 6-10 cm long, hairy outside, auricles rounded, 0.5-1.5 mm long, with a few short bristles, ligule very short, blade linear-lanceolate, up to 30 cm long, base rounded, apex acuminate. Inflorescence is a large panicle 2-3 m long, on leafless branches, bearing small groups of spikelets at the nodes. Flowering in B. vulgaris is not common. When a culm flowers, it produces a large number of flowers but no fruit, and eventually the culm dies, but the clumps usually survive and return to fully vegetative growth within a few years.