KEW BULLETIN VOL. 66: 195–196 (2011) by Maria S. Vorontsova

http://www.springerlink.com/content/d63588188004h768/

KEW BULLETIN VOL. 66: 195–196 (2011)

© The Board of Trustees of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, 2011

Book Reviews

(Edited by B. M. Spooner)

K. C. Koshy. Bamboos at TBGRI. Pp. 104, 128 colour photographs, 1 painting, 1 graph, 1 map. India:  Tropical Botanic Garden and Research Institute (TBGRI), Palode, Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala 695562, http://www.tbgri.in, e-mail: tbgri@sancharnet.in,  2010. Price Rs 600 (US$30.00, postage free). ISBN 978- 81-920098-0-3 (softback).

Bamboos are commonly seen but mysterious, with some species able to grow one metre a day, and many species not flowering for over 100 years until mass blooming is followed by mass death. In the twenty-first century we still have no record of flowers for many species and we are seemingly no closer to understanding bamboo reproductive systems or the evolutionary driving forces behind them. This worrying lack of knowledge combined with their economic importance make the study of bamboos a priority. This book demonstrates some of the extensive and valuable work funded by the Indian government.

This is a catalogue of 68 bamboo species and 933 live germplasm accessions at the Tropical Botanic Garden and Research Institute (TBGRI), Kerala, a collection with emphasis on species native to southern India. It includes a history of the institute and the collection from its establishment in 1979 with lively descriptions of bamboo hunting in areas “infested with wild elephants” and accidental discovery of optimum propagating conditions while smuggling propagules labelled as “household materials”. A garden map is provided, the bamboo museum and nursery are described, and current hybridization programs and their implications are discussed. In the main part of the book each species section includes synonyms, their publication details and bibliographic occurrences, a short description, a distribution statement, and a description of the living collection history. These are followed by a detailed compilation of information on all living accessions including their origin, the exact current coordinates, and cultivation notes; a list of herbarium specimens made from the living accessions is also provided. Synonymy and nomenclature follows GrassBase (Clayton et al. 2010), although with some disagreement on generic placements. Descriptions match those published by Grass- Base but in a reduced and amended form.

This is an attractive publication with high quality graphic design and numerous photographs. It succeeds in its stated aim of promoting bamboos and the bamboo collection at TBGRI to the amateur reader. For professionals working with bamboos, the accession and specimen information would perhaps be easier to use in a searchable electronic format, especially if it was made available online. As no modern guide exists to the bamboos of India, perhaps the author could consider producing a taxonomic publication such as Judziewicz et al. (1999) for the New World bamboos.

The reviewer would like to thank Dr Jatmi Dransfield for valuable discussion that has greatly contributed to this review.

Maria S. Vorontsova

References

Clayton, W. D., Harman, K. T. & Williamson, H. (2010).GrassBase — The Online World Grass Flora. http://www.kew.org/data/grasses-db.html. [accessed 24 January 2010]

Judziewicz, E. J., Clark, L. G., Londono, X. & Stern, M. J. (1999). American Bamboos. Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington DC.