Name:
Arundinaria gigantea ssp. gigantea Wet Canebrake
Reference:
NatureServe Biotics 2019
Description:
This association is characterized by dense, often monospecific thickets of the bamboo shrub <i>Arundinaria gigantea</i> occupying large areas referred to as canebrakes. The canebrake shrubland type was historically widespread, but is now rare and occupies very little of its former acreage. It was best developed in streamside flats and alluvial floodplains on ridges and terraces where it was protected from prolonged inundation. Historically, this community covered large areas of many floodplains and streamsides in the Coastal Plain from North Carolina to Texas, Mississippi River Alluvial Plain, Interior Highlands, Interior Low Plateau, Southern Blue Ridge, Cumberland Mountains, and Western Allegheny Plateau of the southeastern United States. Stands occur on alluvial and loess soils and are often associated with bottomland hardwood forest vegetation. This association is successional and is thought to be maintained by periodic fires. It may have originated following abandonment of aboriginal agricultural fields or other natural and anthropogenic disturbances such as blow-downs and catastrophic floods. Historical accounts report cane as abundant along the Wabash and Ohio drainage systems, as well as common along larger rivers (Buffalo, White, Norfork) in the Ozarks and Ouachitas. It was also reported as common along the Red and Mississippi rivers in Louisiana, Coastal Prairie rivers in Texas, and the Black, Washita, Arkansas, Sabine, Pearl, Tombigbee, Yazoo, Savannah, and St. Mary's rivers. Large, extant canebrakes still exist and have been documented from the Ocmulgee Basin, south of Macon, Georgia. In the Cumberland Mountains and Western Allegheny Plateau, streamside flats and bottomlands were dominated by <i>Arundinaria</i>, without an overstory, or with widely scattered trees.
Accession Code:
urn:lsid:vegbank.org:commConcept:32696-{C5D92EAF-5A3C-4D0D-A6BD-DBE91D47C388}
Plot-observations of this Community Concept:
9
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