Arundo donax L.   Poaceae (Grass Family)   Europe   Giant Reed   Reed Grass

                                          January Photo

Plant Characteristics: Tall perennial reed with thick rhizomes, broad blades and large plume-like terminal panicle; culms stout, to 6 or 7 m. high; blades to 6 cm. wide; spikelets several flowered, ca. 12 mm. long, the florets successively smaller; rachilla glabrous, disarticulating above the glumes and between the florets; glumes +/-unequal, membranaceous, 3-nerved, narrow, slender-pointed, ca. as long as the spikelet; lemmas 8-12 mm., 3-nerved, long-pilose, narrow upward, the nerves ending in slender teeth, the middle one becoming an awn; palea 3-5 mm., hairy at base.

Name:  Ancient Latin name.

Habitat:  Moist places like ditches, seeps, etc.; desert and cismontane Calif.; March-Sept.

Name:  Latin, harundo=arundo, a reed and donax, a sort of reed.  (Jaeger 27,84).

General:  Occasional in the study area.  Photographed along the path between 23rd Street and the Delhi Ditch. This stand has increased in size through the years and now (2001) has the attention of the local representatives of the Orange County Parks, Beach and Recreation Dept., who are trying to get money to eradicate the grass.  (my comments).   Sometimes becomes a serious pest in waterways by reducing the carrying capacity of the ditch.  In certain parts of the southwest the culms are used in the building of adobe huts, also for mats, screens and lattices.  It is reported that as early as l820, A. donax was so plentiful along the Los Angeles River that it was preferred to the tules commonly used for the purpose.  (Robbins et al. 55-56).     The culms, split when young, are used in making baskets and arrow shafts.  (lecture by Charlotte Clarke, April 1987, author of Useful and Edible Plants of California.     Arundo species have been known to cause hay fever and asthma.  (Fuller 383).       The Chumash Indians, whose tribes populated the Santa Barbara area, used Arundo donax to supplement the large native wild rye and carrizo grasses in construction, arrow making and other crafts.  It was also used like carrizo grass (Phragmites communis) for cigarette-like tubes to hold smoking tobacco.  (Timbrook, J., "Chumash Ethnobotany: A Preliminary Report".  Journal of Ethnobiology, December 1984, 141-169).       The Seri Indians from Tuburon Island in the Gulf of California used the native carrizo, Phragmites communis, to make vials to store items such as cattail pollen and face paint.  (Campbell 199).      Roy Felix adjusted his safety goggles, pulled on leather gloves and stepped into the dusty field to do battle.  His foe was something our of a science-fiction novel--a 25 foot tall green monster that grows several inches a day, seems indestructible and travels at breakneck speed strangling everything in sight.  Meet Arundo donax, the killer weed of Southern California.  It is the major threat to the Santa Ana River, which supplies much of the Orange County with water.  Already in control of up to 10,000 riverbank acres, the weed is spreading environmental devastation, drinking enough liquid along the way to supply as many as 100,000 county residents a year.  ...The plant wasn't always public enemy No. 1.  In the18th Century in the Mediterranean region, where it grows naturally, builders used it as material.  A bamboo-like cane with 1.5 inch stalks, the plant is perfect for providing stability to walls when embedded in adobe.  So when the Spanish missionaries came to the New World in the 1700's, they brought the bamboo with them for use in constructing missions like the one at San Juan Capistrano.  For years it grew in isolated stands along the riverbanks.  It wasn't until the post World War II development boom, however, that the cane began spreading downstream and forcing out native vegetation, a process that has accelerated in recent decades.  To fight the spread of the plant, team Arundo, group of nearly 20 local, county, state and federal agencies including the Orange County Water District and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has been formed.  About 1.6 million has been raised from member agencies for eradication of the weed.  (Haldane, David.  "Waging War on a Green Invader".  Los Angeles Times 16 July 1995, Orange County Section: B1.      About 6 species of warmer parts of Old World.  (Munz, Flora So. Calif. 947).

Text Ref:  Munz, Flora So. Calif. 947; Robbins et al. 55; Roberts 45.

Photo Ref:  Jan 2 84 #23,24.

Identity: by F. Roberts.

Computer Ref:  Plant Data 36.

Have plant specimen.

Last edit 9/23/02.

                                         January Photo