ARUNDO, the REED: a genus of the digynia order, belonging to the triandria class of plants; and in the natural method ranking under the 4th order, Gramina. The calyx consists of two valves, and the floccules are thick and downy.
Species and properties. 1. The phragmitis, or common marsh-reed, grows by the sides of rivers and in standing waters. 2. The debar, or manured reed, is a native of warm countries, but will bear the cold of our moderate winters in the open air. It dies to the surface in autumn, but appears again in the spring, and, if kept supplied with water, will grow 10 or 12 feet high in one summer. The stalks of this are brought from Spain and Portugal; and are used by the weavers, as also for making fishing-rods. 3. The versicolor, or Indian variegated reed, is supposed to be a variety of the second, differing from it only in having variegated leaves. 4. The bambos, or bamboo*, is a native of the East Indies and some parts of America; where it frequently attains the height of 60 feet. The main root is long, thick, jointed, spreads horizontally, and sends out many cylindrical woody fibres, of a whitish colour, and many feet long. From the joints of the main root spring several round jointed stalks to a prodigious height, and at about 10 or 12 feet from the ground send out at their joints several stalks joined together at their base: these run up in the same manner as those they shoot out from. If any of these be planted with a piece of the first stalk adhering to them, they will perpetuate their species. They are armed at their joints with one or two sharp rigid spines, and furnished with oblong oval leaves, eight or nine inches long, seated on short foot-stalks. The flowers are produced in large panicles from the joint of the stalks, placed three in a parcel close to their receptacles: they resemble those of the common reed, and are succeeded by seeds of the same form surrounded with down.
The young shoots are covered with a dark-green bark; these when very tender are put up in vinegar, salt, garlic, and the pods of capicum, and thus afford a pickle, which is esteemed a valuable condiment in the Indies, and is said greatly to promote the appetite and assist digestion (see ACUMAR). The stalks in their young state are almost solid, and contain a milky juice: this is of a sweet nature; and as the stalks advance in age, they become hollow, except at the joints, where they are stopped by a woody membrane, upon which this liquor lodges, and concretes into a substance called Tabaxir, or sugar of Mombu, which was held in such esteem by the ancients, in some particular disorders, that it was equal in value to its weight in silver. The
old stalks grow to five or six inches diameter, are then of a shining yellow colour, and are so hard and durable that they are used in buildings, and for making all sorts of household furniture. These when bored through the membranes at their joints, are converted into water-pipes. They serve also to make the sticks and poles with which the slaves or other persons carry those sorts of litters which are called palanquins, and are so common and convenient in all the East. The smaller stalks are used for walking-sticks. The inhabitants of Otaheite make flutes of them, about a foot long, with two holes only, which they stop with the first finger of the left hand and the middle one of the right, and they blow through their nostrils. 5. The arborea, with a tree-like stalk, differs from the former only in having narrower leaves. 6. The orientalis is what the Turks use as writing-pens; it grows in a valley near mount Athos, as also on the banks of the river Jordan. None of these plants are at present to be found in Britain.
Culture. As all these plants grow naturally in low marshy lands, they must be supplied with plenty of water. The second kind requires little care; the third is more delicate, and requires to be kept in pots. The fourth, fifth, and sixth sorts must be preserved in stoves. They are to be planted in tubs filled with rich earth, and plentifully supplied with water. When the tubs decay they may be suffered to grow into the tan, which will encourage them to grow to a larger size: but care must be taken, when the bed is refreshed with new tan, to leave a sufficient quantity of old tan about the roots of the plants; for if they are too much bared and the new tan laid near them, when that heats it will scorch their roots, so that the plants are sometimes destroyed by it.