PlantFiles: Giant Reed, Spanish Cane, Reed Grass
Arundo donax

Arundo Donax is one of the few plants in the yard that I would replace if it didn't overwinter. It's a large plant and needs a lot of room. In some areas it may be invasive but it's not here in zone 5 Iowa. My plant is about 5 years old, can get around 20 feet tall and is probably about five or six feet wide. It adds variety to an ornamental grass display in the back yard. :)

I'm 61 years old and the first time I saw this cane was when I was 6-7 years old, and I loved it at first sight. It grew in a long, watery ditch beside the highway where I lived in the country side in N.W. Alabama. I thought it was beautiful, tall, and majestic. Then for some reason it died and I didn't see it again until about 25 years later at an old house my sister moved into. So, I dug up a few of the ugly roots and took it home and planted it. It didn't do too good. Then after a couple years, it started multipling, growing, and looking healthy. I didn't know it's name. I ask people about it and they didn't know either. Mama said she thought it was some kind of Japanese cane. So thats what we called it for years, multipling Japanese cane. I moved it to another property a few years later and planted it in a low place in the front yard that stayed moist longer than the rest of the yard, and it thrived. Family trouble hit us and I moved away for about 5 years. Then we came back to this property and I was amazed at the giant, wide, tall, humongous growth of this cane. Everything was overgrown on the property. We cleaned the property off and tried to get the cane under control, but that was an overwhelming problem. It had grown into the gravel driveway, up into the yard and grass. But, we kept on digging up those ugly roots and chopping down the cane until we got it back to the size we wanted. I love my beautiful cane with it's fuzzy tassels on top and I will keep and manage it as long as I can. I've also transplanted some of those ugly roots to other parts of the yard, and some lived and some didn't.

I have this plant in my garden in south west France, near Cahors. It is proving extremely difficult to eradicate and quite frankly is a serious nuiscance. Beware, anyone contemplating planting this in their garden.

Typicaly hardy to zone 6 but can be grown in zone 5. Winter mulching or micro climates help in zone 5.

Because of this plants nature, it is best planted recessed in a hole where it will have room to rise without coming up out of the ground.Just add dirt on top as it rises up. It is very difficult to remove and is best done with a tractor or an axe with a lot of sweat. Do not plant it next to any non permanent sidewalks, retaining walls, etc as it will move them. The rhizomes are as thick as your wrist and very tough. It is the tallest ornamental grass I have found in the Encyclopedia of Ornamental Grasses. This actually grows up to 24' tall with 3' tall seed heads on top.

This plant loves water. The more water you give it, the taller it will get. Witholding water will keep it shorter but also causes the bottom leaves to brown up.

This plant can get pretty invasive, as its roots are near impossible to remove, and can exceed weights of 5lbs! The roots also contain the compounds N,N-DMT, 5-OH-DMT, 5-MeO-DMT, Gramine (which is notably toxic). The plant also contains very high amounts of silica in the stalks, and this has been utilized for its strength for thousands of years.

i chose 'neutral' because i have no personal experience with donax arundo other than seeing it growing in the wild. i'm sure this plant is horribly invasive, and has no or little benefit to wildlife - not even being eaten by insects (other than some insects in other countries which researchers are studying to see if it would be good *or not* to import to the US in the hopes of controlling this plant), but i just wanted to report that it's not only growing in warm areas as is so often reported. i've found it growing in wetlands near the Anderson Ranch Reservoir, at about 4,500 ft altitude, in the mountains of idaho, where temps can get to 30 degrees below zero each winter. USDA zone 3, or Sunset Western zone 1a.

This plant was very well behaved the first year we had it. The second year, it was a little more intrusive. The third year, it began pushing up a small wall we had next to it. We spent time every 3-4 weeks digging it away from the wall and resetting the blocks. We started with a narrow row with small nodes on the roots. It is now 2'-2 1/2 ' wide and encroaching on the other plantings. In a row 14' long, it has taken 6 hours just to get half of them out. And this is with moist soil around it. The root balls are hard as rock and very thick. We've been using a mattock and hatchet to remove it.

Aggressively invasive plant growing in Southern CA rivers. The state of CA is using a $5 million grant over the next 2 years to remove it from just 200 acres locally.

During abatement programs, it refuses to die. It can come back after hacking and slashing, poisoning and starving, burning and even smothering. It's a seriously bad plant that consumes significant amounts of water, spreads incredibly fast, often from just pieces of stem that have broken off and washed to a new spot. Every bit of it can reshoot.

It's an extreme fire hazard, able to ignite and explode even while green. The cane grows back even more densely after fire. Arundo can grow more than three inches per day.

When rivers and creeks have high flows, thick patches of the giant reed are carried downstream, where they damage bridges and culverts, and recolonize in spots along the way. Thick stands also change the flow of water, speeding up bank erosion.

Of all the invasive plants, arundo is the largest threat to Southern California's riverbank ecosystems, scientists say.

Giant Reed, Spanish Cane, Reed Grass Arundo donax is naturalized in Texas and other States and is considered an invasive noxious plant in Texas.

Giant reed is also commonly known as wild cane and its native habit is India. Being probably first introduced in the United States in Los Angeles, California in the early 1800's, it has become widely dispersed into all of the warm temperate areas and subtropical regions of the world through human introductions achieving naturalized status. Giant reed is widely planted as an ornamental throughout the warmer areas of the United States and is used along ditches for erosion control in the Southwest..

It is a perennial grass that can grow to over 20 feet tall. Giant reed propers in well drained soils where abundant moisture is available such as streams, ditches and riverbanks and grows in many soil types from heavy clays to loose sands. It has fleshy, creeping rootstocks which form compact masses. Its tough, fibrous roots penetrate deeply into the soil. Giant reed root and stem fragments can float for miles and may take root and initiate new infestations. It has a rapid growth rate which makes it possible for it to quickly invade new areas forming pure stands.

Giant reed can outcompete and completely suppress native vegetation once established and it is very difficult to remove. It can choke riversides and stream channels, interfere with flood control, increase fire potential and reduce habitat for wildlife. In addition, the root mats form natural dams causing debris to collect behind culverts, bridges and other structures which lead to structural damage. Giant reed can increase the potential for fires because it ignites easily.

However, giant reed has a variety of uses. It had been used to make primitive pipe organs. The reeds for woodwind instruments are still made from its culms and there are no known satisfactory substitutes. Also, it is employed in basketry and used for livestock fodder, making fishing rods, as a medicinal element, and soil erosion control.

The 1-2 inches wide and 12 inches long leaves are elongated. The flowers appear on 2-foot long, dense, plume-like panicles during August and September.

I would not recommend planting giant reed grass as an ornamental plant. It took over a large portion of our yard when I was a child and took years and years to eradicate.