Poaceae (Gramineae), the Grass Family
Burma reed is a robust, perennial grass that forms dense clumps up to 15 feet high, although immature plants may be considerably shorter. The culms (stems), which are often branched, are approximately ½ inch wide, round in cross-section and filled with soft pith. Each culm bears multiple nodes, spaced 3 to 5 inches apart, from which the leaves originate. The leaves are deciduous at the junction of the leaf blade and the leaf sheath. The leaf blade, which measures up to 40 inches long and 1 inch wide, is generally glabrous (hairless) or sometimes pilose (with long, soft, shaggy hairs) on the upper surface. The leaf blade is auriculate (with small earlike projections) at its base. The ligule (an appendage on the upper leaf surface where it meets the sheath) is a cartilaginous ridge with a line of hairs about 1/10 inch long. The inflorescence is a large (up to 3 feet long), feathery, erect to nodding panicle with a glistening, silky appearance. The spikelets are about 3/8 inch long, with one sterile basal floret and four to eight fertile, bisexual florets. The lemmas (the lower of the two bracts enclosing the florets) have ciliate margins and a bifid apex, with a short, recurved awn between the apical teeth. At maturity, the spikelets break apart to release the tiny seeds, which are approximately 1/20 inch long.
This species is native to warm temperate and tropical Asia from northeastern India and Nepal eastward to Taiwan and southward to the Indonesian island of Java. In its native range, Burma reed is found in a variety of habitats at altitudes from sea level to 6,500 feet. It is occasionally cultivated and has now become naturalized in the Bahamas, Mexico and Florida.
Burma reed has been vouchered with herbarium specimens from a few South Florida counties. Although it is most commonly found in disturbed habitats, Burma reed also occurs in swamps, forest edges and pine rocklands.
Common reed (Phragmites australis) is superficially similar to Burma reed, but may be distinguished by its longer rhizomes, leafy stolons (a creeping stem horizontal to the ground surface), the ring of hairs encircling the stem at the base of the inflorescence and the awnless spikelets with eciliate lemmas. Sugarcane plumegrass (Saccharum giganteum) also resembles Burma reed, but it has paired, single-flowered spikelets with much longer, uncurved awns, and its ligule has longer hairs that are not arranged in single line.
In Florida, Burma reed flowers throughout the year. It produces large quantities of seed that are dispersed by wind. It is also spread by fragmented rhizomes, which may be transported by construction machinery and limerock quarrying.
In 1916, Burma reed was introduced to the USDA Plant Introduction Station in Coconut Grove as a potential erosion control and ornamental. It was subsequently planted at the Florida Botanical Garden and Arboretum (now Highlands Hammock State Park) in Sebring. By 1993, it had invaded nearly 75% of pine rocklands in Miami-Dade County outside of Everglades National Park. Burma reed tolerates a variety of soil, light and moisture conditions, but seems to thrive on infertile, rocky, dry locations in full sun. Top growth is killed by frost and fire, but plants readily resprout from the rhizomes.