Ochlandra ebracteata Raizada & Chatterjee is the
largest leaved Old World bamboo
Neurolepis elata (Kunth) Pilger [=N. nobilis (Munro)
Pilger] and N. glomerata Swallen, found in the New World possess the
largest leaf blades in the grass family. During our bamboo explorations in the
forests of Kerala we came across a few clumps of the reed bamboo Ochlandra
Thwaites with unusually large leaves. This prompted us to draw a comparison of
the leaves of Ochlandra with those of Neurolepis Meissner.
We estimated the leaf area from the
linear measurements of leaves (= leaf blades) using the equation A = 0.905 LB,
where L = length of leaf and B = breadth of a point midway along the length.
Linear measurements were gathered from two sources, (1) from the online World
Grass flora and (2) from field i.e the Ochlandra growing regions of
Kerala. From the former the length and
breadth of leaf blades of all bamboo species having 20 cm or more in length
were collected. For the latter field surveys were conducted for the collection
of larger leaves and their measurements were noted discarding the length of acumen.
The leaf area of each species was estimated using the higher values of L and B
in the case of measurements obtained from online World Grass flora (as the aim was
to find leaves with maximum areas) and from actual length and breadth of larger
leaves in the case of natural stands. From the above data we prepared a list of
species in descending order of their leaf areas.
The largest leaf blade collected by
us in Kerala is that of Ochlandra ebracteata Raizada & Chatterjee
which measured 63.1cm in
length and 14.5 cm in breadth with a total area of 828.02 cm2. Thus
O. ebracteata represents the species with the sixth largest leaf among
world bamboos and the largest in the Old World though it accounts only 1/16th
of the leaf size in Neurolepis elata.
O. wightii (Munro) Fischer occupied the second position followed by O.
travancorica (Bedd.) Benth. ex Gamble.
Koshy,
K.C., K. P. Dintu and B. Gopakumar. 2010. The enigma of leaf size and plant
size in bamboos. Current Science 99(8):1025-1027.
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