Though two
Phragmites species,
Phragmites australis(Cav.)Trin. and
Phragmites japonica Steudel, frequently planted as a material of waterfront revegetations and riparian buffer zones resemble very much each other, these species can be classified based on their epigeal stolon, the former does not have the epigeal stolon and the latter has the stolon. However, it is recently suggested that the classification of
Phragmites australis and
Phragmites japonica based on the epigeal stolon will be not appropriate though there is no academic data which proves this. In this study, therefore,
Phragmites communities with epigeal stolon and those without the stolon were classified based on their characteristics of inflorescence and genetic positions in the Satunai River, Hokkaido, northern Japan. In addition, the classification of above-mentioned two species based on their some morphological characteristics except for the epigeal stolon were also tried in this paper. Results were as follows; Though
Phragmites communities with epigeal stolon were clearly classi-fied as a
Phragmites japonica,
Phragmites communities without epigeal stolon were not clearly classified as a
Phragmites australis because some
Phragmites communities without epigeal stolon were classified as a
Phragmites japonica based on their characteristics of inflorescence and genetic positions. However,
Phragmites communities without epigeal stolon were also clearly classified as a
Phragmites australis or
Phragmites japonica by confirming their auricles, short hairs on node and long hairs on base of lamina in the culm. That is, in
Phragmites communities without epigeal stolon, the communities without auricles or with short hairs on node in the culm were classified as a
Phragmites japonica and the communities with auricles, long hairs on base of lamina or without short hairs on node in the culm were classified as a
Phragmites australis.
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