Chinese medicine Prickly Bamboo Shoots are the shoots of the grass family plant Bambusa arundinacea. It is also known as Bambusa arundinacea, Zhu Zhu, Juzhu Shoots, and Bamboo Shoots. Prickly Bamboo Shoots are mainly used to treat diarrhea and promote digestion. It is effective for treating dysentery and indigestion.
Image of Prickly Bamboo Shoots
Prickly Bamboo Shoots are tall bamboo plants, with stems reaching 10 to 24 meters in height and 5 to 15 centimeters in diameter. The internodes are about 30 centimeters long and hollow.
The leaf sheaths are densely covered with brown thorns. The sheaths are thick and leathery, rectangular or elongated triangular in shape, with thorns on the back near the base. The auricles of the sheaths are slightly symmetrical. The edges of the leaf blades have fringed hairs. The persistent leaf blades are triangular in shape and have small brown-black thorns on the front.
The branches have 2 to 3 thorns. The small branches have 6 to 8 leaves. The leaf sheaths are 2.5 to 5 centimeters long, with several gray, easily shed fringed hairs at the mouth of the sheath. The leaf blades are truncate with a flat tip, sometimes with tufts of hair at the apex.
Image of Prickly Bamboo Shoots
The leaf blades of Prickly Bamboo Shoots are slender and lanceolate, 6 to 20 centimeters long and 6 to 20 millimeters wide. The base tapers abruptly into a leaf stalk 1 to 3 millimeters long. The back of the leaf blades has short hairs, with 4 to 7 secondary veins and inconspicuous transverse veins. The leaf margins are rough or smooth on one side.
The spikelets are clustered, dense, with bran-like scales at the base, containing 4 to 12 flowers, yellow-green or pale green. The apex of the glume is pointed, without hairs, and the outer glume is ovate or lanceolate, without hairs. The inner glume has 2 ridges and is covered with 3 scales, with long white hairs on the edges.
There are 6 stamens, with anthers 4 millimeters long, and the tips of the anther locules can resemble small pen hairs. The apex of the ovary is covered with thorns, with 1 style and 3 feathery stigmas. The shoots are harvested from May to June, and the flowers bloom from August to December.
