Plants densely tufted,deciduous. Culms perennial, solid or with a small cavity, 6-15 m tall, 2.5-7.5 cm in diameter, varying with climate; nodes ± swollen and, in open situations, bearing leafy, often deflexed branches even from the base, lower nodes often rooting; internodes 30-45 cm long. Culm sheaths variable, the lower shorter than the upper, 8-30 cm long, striate, usually covered on the back with stiff golden-brown hairs, sometimes glabrous in dry localities, margins ciliate, auricles small, top rounded, sheath blades triangular, subulate, hairy on both sides. Foliage leaf-blades linear-lanceolate, 2.5-5 cm long in dry localities, to 25 cm long in moist ones, 0.5-3 cm wide, bases abruptly rounded into a short petiole, gradually narrowed upwards into a sharply acuminate, twisted point, lower surfaces softly hairy, upper surfaces rough and often hairy, margins scabrous.Synflorescences panicles of large dense globular heads, 3-5 cm apart. Spikelets spiny, usually hairy, fertile spikelets intermixed with many smaller sterile spikelets, 75-12 mm long, 2.5-5 mm wide, with 2-3 fertile florets; bracts and glumes similar, ovate, spiny; lemmas ovate, tipped with a sharp spine surrounded by tufts of hair; paleas ovate or obovate, emarginate. Caryopses brown, shining, ovoid to sub-globose, about 8 mm long, hairy above, beaked with the persistent base of the style; pericarps coriaceous.
Dendrocalamus strictus is usually an undershrub in deciduous forests. It is the most widespread bamboo in Southeast Asia and is the foundation of India’s paper industry. The foliage affords abundant fodder for elephants. It flowers gregariously over large areas at intervals of perhaps 25-35 years (see McClure, The Bamboos, p. 169. 1966). It may also be found flowering sporadically, a few clumps at a time, almost every year in most localities. These clumps, however, die after flowering and the seed set is poorer than that produced during gregarious flowering.