Question

Which plant is described by these clues? Its genus name translates as leaf spike, coined for the leafy {bracts} that wrap the rarely seen flowering shoots. Plantings scattered across continents, all clonal descendants of the same original stock, come into flower at the same time after decades without a bloom, then die back together. Each stem is hollow like a straw between swollen joints that are plugged solid, and it never thickens afterwards: a shoot emerges at its final width of 1 to 2 inches (2.5 to 5 cm) and simply hardens. A flattened groove runs the length of every {internode} above a branch, switching to the opposite face of the stem at each successive {node} as you follow it upward. Every {node} above the base carries exactly two branches, one stout and one slender, rather than a single shoot or a crowded spray. It travels by horizontal underground {rhizomes} that run outward from the parent clump every season, which is why growers sink a 24 to 30 inch (60 to 75 cm) barrier around any in-ground planting. Its home ground is the moist valley bottoms and riverbanks of Fujian and Zhejiang in southeastern China. The specific epithet is the Latin word for the colour of gold leaf, describing what a second summer of full sun does to the stems. A near twin in the same genus is told apart at a glance because its stems stay green and carry a single contrasting yellow stripe down the groove, where this one colours all over. At the foot of a mature stem a handful of {internodes} crowd together, shortened, swollen and tilted, so the base looks plated like a tortoise shell. Those knobbly bases were cured into walking sticks and umbrella handles, while the straight upper canes supplied the rods anglers fished with before fibreglass.

Accepted Answer

Phyllostachys aurea

Name That Plant #050