Gelagah (Saccharum spontaneum)

Gelagah or wild cane or Kans grass (Saccharum spontaneum) is a species of plants in Poaceae, chronic large grass, reeds spread widely in the tropics with rhizomes that spread long and erect stems, stout, thick hollow and 2-4 meters high.

S. spontaneum has a broad, green stem that is covered in a layer of white wax. Leaves and midribs have a length of 20 cm or more, purplish in color and triangular ligula with short hairs.

Ribbon-shaped leaves, 50-200 cm long, 3-30 mm wide, green, rough surface and sharp margins, a large white bone runs linearly in the middle, getting to the middle getting bigger and narrowing to the sharp end.

Flowers are collected in branch panicles that are branched, ovoid, dense and 20-50 cm long. Branch-shaped branches, 3-15 cm long, containing pairs of spikelet with a stem and the other sitting. From the base of the spikelet grows long white hairs.

Gelagah grows at an altitude of 0-1,700 m with high rainfall which is usually more than 1,500 mm/year. This grass is easy and fast-growing, adapts well to alluvial soils on river banks to sandy soils in former mines and volcanoes, resistant to drought and flooding.

S. spontaneum is used in controlling soil erosion and reclamation of mined lands, animal feed and elephants. The leaves are dried to make a roof, stems for pulp, shredded shoots for eye medicine and boiled shoots for vegetables.

Kingdom: Plantae
Phylum: Tracheophyta
Subphylum: Angiospermae
Class: Liliopsida
Order: Poales
Family: Poaceae
Subfamily: Panicoideae
Tribe: Andropogoneae
Genus: Saccharum
Species: Saccharum spontaneum
Supspecies: Saccharum spontaneum ssp. aegyptiacum, Saccharum spontaneum ssp. spontaneum

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