Plantae > Tracheophyta > Liliopsida > Poales > Poaceae > Phragmites > Phragmites australis

Phragmites australis (common reed; Giant reed; Cane; Ditch reed; Giant reedgrass; Phragmites; Reed grass; Roseau; Roseau cane; Yellow cane)

Synonyms:

Wikipedia Abstract

Phragmites is a genus of four species of large perennial grasses found in wetlands throughout temperate and tropical regions of the world. The World Checklist of Selected Plant Families, maintained by Kew Garden in London, accepts the following four species:
View Wikipedia Record: Phragmites australis

Infraspecies

Phragmites australis americanus
Phragmites australis australis
Phragmites australis berlandieri
Phragmites australis f. australis
Phragmites australis f. flavescens
Phragmites australis f. picta
Phragmites australis f. stolonifera
Phragmites australis isiacus
Phragmites australis var. berlanderi

Invasive Species

View ISSG Record: Phragmites australis

Attributes

Bloom Period [1]  Summer
Drought Tolerance [1]  Low
Edible [2]  May be edible. See the Plants For A Future link below for details.
Fire Tolerance [1]  High
Flower Type [2]  Hermaphrodite
Frost Free Days [1]  3 months 20 days
Fruit/Seed Abundance [1]  Medium
Fruit/Seed Begin [1]  Summer
Fruit/Seed End [1]  Fall
Growth Form [1]  Rhizomatous
Growth Period [1]  Spring
Growth Rate [1]  Rapid
Leaf Type [1]  Deciduous
Lifespan [2]  Perennial
Pollinators [2]  Wind
Propagation [1]  Sprig
Regrowth Rate [1]  Moderate
Root Depth [1]  20 inches (51 cm)
Seed Spread Rate [1]  Slow
Seed Vigor [1]  High
Shape/Orientation [1]  Erect
Structure [4]  Grass
Usage [2]  The common reed can provide a large quantity of biomass and this is used in a wide variety of ways as listed below. Annual yields of 40 - 63 tonnes per hectare have been reported; The plant is also converted into alcohol (for use as a fuel), is burnt as a fuel and is made into fertilizer; The plant is rich in pentosans and may be used for the production of furfural - the nodes and sheaths yield 6.6% whilst the underground parts over 13% of furfural; The pentosan content increases throughout the growing period and is maximum in the mature reed; The reed can be used also for the preparation of absolute alcohol, feed yeast and lactic acid; The stems are useful in the production of homogeneous boards; They can also be processed into a fine fibrous material suitable as a filler in upholstery; The stems have many uses. They are used for thatching roofs; It can last for 100 years; The stems and leaves are also used for building dwellings, lattices, fences, arrows by Indians, and for weaving mats, carrying nets, basket making, insulation, fuel, as a cork substitute etc; The stem contains over 50 percent cellulose and is useful in the manufacture of pulps for rayon and paper; The fibre from the leaves and stems is used for making paper; The fibre is 0.8 - 3.0 mm long and 5.0 - 30.5
Vegetative Spread Rate [1]  Rapid
Flower Color [1]  White
Foliage Color [1]  Green
Fruit Color [1]  White
Fruit Conspicuous [1]  Yes
Height [2]  11.808 feet (3.6 m)
Width [2]  9.84 feet (3 m)
Hardiness Zone Minimum [1]  USDA Zone: 3 Low Temperature: -40 F° (-40 C°) → -30 F° (-34.4 C°)
Light Preference [3]  Mostly Sunny
Soil Acidity [3]  Neutral
Soil Fertility [3]  Intermediate
Soil Moisture [3]  Wet
Water Use [1]  Moderate
Screening - Summer [1]  Dense
Screening - Winter [1]  Moderate
View Plants For A Future Record : Phragmites australis

Ecoregions

Protected Areas

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Ecosystems

Predators

Consumers

External References

USDA Plant Profile

NatureServe Explorer

Citations

Attributes / relations provided by
♦ 1USDA Plants Database, U. S. Department of Agriculture
♦ 2Plants For A Future licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License
♦ 3ECOFACT 2a Technical Annex - Ellenberg’s indicator values for British Plants, M O Hill, J O Mountford, D B Roy & R G H Bunce (1999)
♦ 4Kattge, J. et al. (2011b) TRY - a global database of plant traits Global Change Biology 17:2905-2935
♦ 5Ben-Dov, Y., Miller, D.R. & Gibson, G.A.P. ScaleNet 4 November 2009
♦ 6Jorrit H. Poelen, James D. Simons and Chris J. Mungall. (2014). Global Biotic Interactions: An open infrastructure to share and analyze species-interaction datasets. Ecological Informatics.
♦ 7Biological Records Centre Database of Insects and their Food Plants
♦ 8Tscharntke, T. 1992. Cascade effects among four trophic levels: bird predation on galls affects density-dependent parasitism. Ecology 73:1689–1698
♦ 9Diet and distribution of elephant in the Maputo Elephant Reserve, Mozambique, Willem F. De Boer, Cornelio P. Ntumi, Augusto U. Correia and Jorge M. Mafuca, Afr. J. Ecol., 38, 188-201 (2000)
♦ 10Food habits of the coypu, Myocastor coypus, and its impact on aquatic vegetation in a freshwater habitat of NW Italy, Claudio PRIGIONI, Alessandro BALESTRIERI and Luigi REMONTI, Folia Zool. – 54(3): 269–277 (2005)
♦ 11del Hoyo, J., Elliott, A., Sargatal, J., Christie, D.A. & de Juana, E. (eds.). Handbook of the Birds of the World Alive. Lynx Edicions, Barcelona.
♦ 12Species Interactions of Australia Database, Atlas of Living Australia, Version ala-csv-2012-11-19
♦ 13Study of Northern Virginia Ecology
Ecoregions provided by World Wide Fund For Nature (WWF). WildFinder: Online database of species distributions, ver. 01.06 Wildfinder Database
Abstract provided by DBpedia licensed under a Creative Commons License
Species taxanomy provided by GBIF Secretariat (2022). GBIF Backbone Taxonomy. Checklist dataset https://doi.org/10.15468/39omei accessed via GBIF.org on 2023-06-13; License: CC BY 4.0