The speckled bamboo’s culm is scattered with purple-brown blotches, one after another, like tear stains fallen on bamboo—which is why it also carries the moving name: xiangfei bamboo.

The Speckles on the Cane

The speckled bamboo’s culm is green, yet scattered over it are purple-brown blotches, each of a different depth, as if tears had fallen onto the bamboo. Look closely and the marks are set into the skin of the culm; touch them and they are still smooth.

In a grove of plain green bamboos it is recognizable at once: the others are clean, it carries marks. The marks are not a disease—they are its way of looking.

— Tang Dynasty · Liu Yuxi, “Spirit of the Xiao and Xiang Rivers” —

Speckled bamboo branch,

speckled bamboo branch—

drop by drop the tear marks carry longing.

The Story of the Xiangfei Bamboo

It carries the moving name xiangfei bamboo. The legend says that when Emperor Shun journeyed south and never returned, his two consorts Ehuang and Nüying followed him to Lake Dongting, weeping until their tears wet the bamboo and left marks—and so the culm came to bear these impressions.

A legend is a legend, yet the Chinese kept this one on the bamboo itself, kept it for millennia. A single cane has since carried a story, and whoever sees it remembers parting and long gazing.

Drop by Drop the Tear Marks Carry Longing

Liu Yuxi wrote in “Spirit of the Xiao and Xiang Rivers”: speckled bamboo branch, speckled bamboo branch—drop by drop the tear marks carry longing. The three short lines set the opening, turning the bamboo’s spots into the heart’s keepsakes.

Since then, nearly every poem on the speckled bamboo returns to this feeling. Once a plant is written into a line of verse, it can hardly be only a plant again—one of the most particular things about Chinese flora.

• How to know it: Running bamboo; culms green with purple-brown blotches, up to over ten meters tall; a close relative of henon bamboo, culm straight and even.
• Season: Shoots in spring; blotches gradually appear and deepen as the culm lignifies; viewable all year.
• Caution: The blotches are a feature, not a disease—when buying, distinguish them from mechanical damage and disease spots.

Garden and Timber

The speckled bamboo grows straight and serves for poles, staffs, and utensils; but in most settings it is planted in gardens and memorial grounds as a scene with a story.

Memorial planting is precisely about this meaning: what is planted is not bamboo but a memory. Green cane with marks, a sound in the wind—standing beneath it, anyone can catch that thread of the old feeling.

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Keywords: speckled bamboo · xiangfei bamboo · legend · memorial planting