Plant · P-976

River Cane

Arundinaria gigantea

River Cane is a native North American bamboo that forms dense stands, called canebrakes, along riverbanks and in wet bottomland forest. Its tough, hollow canes are traditionally split for basketry, weaving and flute-making, and the young shoots are cooked as a vegetable. It spreads by rhizome into thickets 5 to 25 feet tall and 8 to 20 feet wide, and once covered vast tracts of the southeastern floodplain before most canebrakes were cleared for farmland. In cultivation it wants consistently moist, loamy ground with high organic matter rather than standing water; it tolerates brief flooding but declines where soil stays permanently wet.