When Do Reed Flowers Usually Bloom? A Detailed Guide to the Blooming Period
Reed is a perennial aquatic or wet-loving tall grass, commonly found in riverside and stream areas with plenty of water. Every summer and autumn it produces beautiful inflorescences that look very striking, so when do reed flowers bloom?
1. When do reed flowers bloom?
Reed flowers generally bloom from August to December. The flowers are borne in panicles, about 10-40cm long in total, slightly drooping, with the panicle itself about 15-25cm long and the spikelets about 1.4cm long, white-green or brown in color. The fruit is a lanceolate caryopsis.
2. What are the uses of reed?
1. Main value
Reed can be used not only as an industrial raw material for papermaking and building materials, but its roots can also be used as medicine, with functions such as promoting urination, detoxifying, cooling, relieving vomiting, and preventing encephalitis. Besides its great economic value, reed also has important ecological value: large areas of reed can not only regulate the climate and conserve water sources, but the good wetland ecological environment they form also provides birds with a home for roosting, foraging, and breeding.
2. Economic value
Reed stems contain cellulose and can be used to make paper and artificial fibers. Since ancient times in China, reed has been woven into “reed mats” for heating brick beds, roofing houses, or building temporary structures. In ancient times, various countries made musical instruments from the hollow stems of reed——the reed flute, and the thin membrane inside reed stems was used as the membrane for flutes. Reed panicles can be made into brooms, and the catkins can be used to stuff pillows.
3. Landscape value
Reed planted by park lakesides is especially beautiful during the blooming season. In parks in European countries, the elegant figure of reed can often be seen. New varieties of reed have been bred. They are tolerant of deep water and cold, drought-resistant, heat-resistant, and lodging-resistant, with straight stems, tall plants, thick stalks, and robust leaves, and a high survival rate. They can achieve the advantages of short-term establishment and rapid landscape formation. With strong vitality, easy management, wide environmental adaptability, and fast growth, they are the first choice for scenic tourism, water surface greening, river channel management, water quality purification, swamp wetlands, landscaping projects, soil protection and embankment reinforcement, and soil improvement, and are a pioneer environmental protection plant for embankment reinforcement and land formation.
4. Livestock value
Reed is also a crop with wide adaptability, strong stress resistance, and high biomass. Reed leaves, reed flowers, reed stems, reed roots, and reed shoots can all be used as medicine and as good forage grass, with high feeding value. The tender stems and leaves are favored by various livestock. Most are used as grazing land, and some are used as cutting grassland or both grazing and cutting land, often as early spring grazing land. Reed grassland has seasonal standing water or is overly wet, and because it is tall grassland, it is suitable for grazing horses and cattle.
The aboveground part of reed is tall and has strong regenerative ability. Grassland dominated by reed also has relatively high biomass among forage grasses, producing 3.9-13.9 tons of fresh grass per hectare under natural conditions. It can be mowed 2-3 times per year. Besides being used for grazing, it can be dried into hay and ensiled. After ensiling, the grass is green in color and strong in aroma, and sheep like to eat it very much, as do cattle and horses.
5. Medicinal value
Reed is a soil-protecting and embankment-reinforcing plant. Reed stems can be used as raw materials for papermaking, rayon, and artificial cotton, and are also used for weaving mats, curtains, and the like; when tender, they contain a large amount of protein and sugar and are excellent feed; the tender shoots are edible and can also be used to make zongzi. The leaves and catkins wrapped outside can be made into brooms; the catkins can fill pillows; the rhizome is called reed root and is used in traditional Chinese medicine. It is cold in nature and sweet in taste, suitable for clearing stomach fire, removing lung heat, strengthening the stomach, relieving vomiting, and promoting urination. Bencao Gangmu says reed leaves “treat cholera with vomiting and counterflow, and carbuncles”; Benjing Daoyuan records that it has “the effect of being burned to preserve its nature and treating various bleedings such as epistaxis”; in addition, reed leaves ground into powder, washed with scallion and pepper soup, and applied, can treat festering back carbuncles.
Reed flowers stop bleeding and detoxify, treating nosebleeds, uterine bleeding, and vomiting and diarrhea. Bencao Tujing records that it “boiled into a thick decoction and taken, governs the poison of fish and crabs.” Reed is both an excellent ingredient in dishes and can treat hot-blooded thirst and gonorrhea. Wangjiu Yaojie says it can “clear the lungs and quench thirst, promote water metabolism and treat strangury.” Bencao Gangmu records that it can “resolve the poison of various meats.” Reed stems and reed roots are even more important medicines in traditional Chinese medicine for treating warm diseases, able to clear heat and promote fluid production, and remove irritability and stop vomiting. Detailed records exist in fourteen ancient medicinal texts. The quite famous “Qianjin reed” stem has already been exported overseas.
Modern pharmacology has confirmed that the leaves, flowers, stems, and roots of reed all contain rich pharmacological components—pentosan, coixol, protein, fat, carbohydrates, D-glucose, D-galactose, and two uronic acids, as well as more than ten kinds including large amounts of vitamin B1, B2, C, and so on, and thus they have attracted the attention of the medical and pharmaceutical fields.
6. Industrial value
The stems are used as papermaking raw material or as material for weaving mats and curtains and building sheds.