Comparative Anatomical Studies of Four Accessions of Bambusa vulgaris Schrad. ex J.C. Wendl. Collected in Ile-Ife, Osun State, Nigeria

Abstract

A comparative anatomical study was carried out on four accessions of Bambusa vulgaris to identify characters of taxonomic purposes to better understand the relationship between the four accessions and also to fill the knowledge gap in the understanding of their taxonomy. Transverse sections, tangential longitudinal sections and radial longitudinal sections of mature leaf, stem and roots were cut at 8-15 µm on the Reichert sliding microtome. Some sections were done by hand for preliminary studies. Each section was stored in 50% alcohol for anatomical studies. The sections were stained in Safranin-O for three minutes, rinsed in water to remove excess stain and counterstained in Alcian blue for three minutes. Later, the sections were rinsed in water to remove excess stain and then treated with serial grades of alcohol and mounted in dilute glycerol for study. Photomicrographs were taken with the aid of 3013 ACCU-SCOPE Trinocular Microscope with Digital Camera. The qualitative investigations of the four accessions revealed that they were similar. However, accession 1 forms a sister clade with accession 3 and accession 4. This research concluded that quantitative stem and root anatomical characters are important in delineating species accessions and should be employed in separating closely related species as well as different accessions of the same species.