Format: ORAL

Yu-Xiao Zhang1, De-Zhu Li2

1 College of Forestry, Southwest Forestry University, Kunming 650224, China 2 Germplasm Bank of Wild Species, Kunming Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Kunming 650201, China

The bamboos are notorious for the difficulty in taxonomy. Morphological characteristics are the cornerstones for classification. As in other plants, the macro morphology including both reproductive and vegetative features is used in traditional bamboo taxonomy, particularly that of inflorescences and spikelets. Woody bamboos usually flower after decades of vegetative growth, therefore, taxonomists rely much on their vegetative characters, such as rhizome, culms, culm leaf, branch complement, and foliage for classification. However, vegetative characters are more plastic and variable in different environment, which brings confusions for bamboo taxonomy. On the other hand, some micromorphology, such as foliage leaf blade anatomy, epidermis characters, and phytolith (silica body) are exploited as supplementary evidence for bamboo taxonomy. With the development of molecular phylogenetics and phylogenomics, the relationships within Bambusoideae have been changed incredibly, which also render researchers to reassess the evolutionary significance of macro and micro morphology of bamboos. Homoplasy or convergence of some morphological features, including inflorescence has been detected at different taxonomic levels. In addition, inconsistency in terminology for some characters (e.g., inflorescence vs. synflorescence, sheath scar vs. nodal line) exists in current floristic and/or morphological accounts. Those terms should be unified for taxonomic constancy and meaningful evolutionary studies under the Bamboo Phylogeny Group II, a joint international effort. We also propose to establish an image database with an array of morphological characters onto the BambooBase.