Guadua angustifolia

Guadua angustifolia is a massive clumping (sympodial) woody bamboo in the Poaceae (subfamily Bambusoideae) native to lowland and submontane tropical forests from southern Mexico through Central America and the northern Andes, with its centre of diversity in Colombia, Ecuador and Venezuela. Mature culms reach 15 to 30 metres tall and 10 to 22 centimetres in diameter, are dark olive-green when young maturing to yellowish-green, conspicuously banded with whitish nodal rings and armed at each node with three stout, recurved, sharp spines giving the plant its name 'thorny bamboo'. Internodes are hollow with thick, dense walls that make the species the strongest commercial bamboo of the Neotropics. The lanceolate leaf blades are 15 to 30 centimetres long and 2 to 6 centimetres wide, glabrous and parallel-veined, borne on small leafy branches arising at the nodes. Flowering is gregarious and occurs only at long intervals of 30 to 80 years, after which entire clumps usually die. The fruit is a small dry caryopsis typical of the grass family.