Bambuseae + Arundinarieae Phylogeny
Bamboos are a group of 115 genera and 1450 species of perennial forest grasses (Poaceae) whose woody species display diverse morphological characteristics but share multiple shared features that include strong culms, specialized culm leaves, complex vegetative branching, bisexual flowers and gregarious semelparous flowering patterns [1].bambus The bamboo plant can grow extremely fast – the largest bamboos have been known to reach 30 meters in height in just 6 years.bambus It is a very durable and versatile plant that is used for building, cooking, clothing, and art – it is even the national tree of St. Lucia and the kinolau of the Polynesian god Kane.
Unlike other plants that typically defoliate over winter, bamboos remain near dormant but their rhizomes continue to send up shoots the following spring.bambus In colder climates, tropical bamboos may die at or near freezing temperatures but the hardier temperate bamboos can survive down to USDA plant hardiness zone 5. This resiliency is what makes bamboo such a popular garden and landscape plant.
The culms of a bamboo plant can be harvested and replanted to produce the same plant at the same size over and over again.bambus A single culm can produce a new shoot every year and the plant can be trimmed as needed to control its shape. The rapid growth of a bamboo is one reason why it has become such an important source of building materials and other products across the globe.
In a recently published phylogenetic analysis of woody bamboos using full plastome sequences, our results indicated that the monophyletic Bambuseae + Arundinarieae was robustly supported.bambus The neotropical woody bamboos segregated into two well-supported monophyletic groups with the clade of Chusqueinae (Chusquea spectabilis, C. liebmannii) being sister to the clade of Guaduinae (Hickelia madagascariensis, Neololeba atra and Greslania spp.). Both clades were strongly supported with >82% ML bootstrap support.
The genus Bambusa also resolved as monophyletic with a high level of ML bootstrap support (83%).bambus Our plastome phylogenetic data showed that Bambuseae clade was closely related to the neotropical woody bamboos in the clade Olyreae and both groups were more distant from the herbaceous bamboos in the clade Parianeae. This suggests that the morphological features of Bambuseae and Olyreae evolved from common ancestors and that interspecies hybridization played a role in the evolution of bamboo lignin biosynthesis and deposition characters.
It is hoped that the use of plastomes will allow additional genetic and molecular studies to be conducted to further explore the evolution of the bamboo plant.bambus For example, transcriptome analysis could provide further insight into the underlying genetics of some of the unique morphological traits associated with the Bambuseae + Olyrinae clade including longer branches in this group compared to other woody bamboos as well as genes involved in lignin formation and cellulose deposition. Further characterization of these traits is required to determine if they are adaptive for bamboos.