This lifeform is found east of the Continental Divide in North America. This lifeform is locally common in suitable environments.

Switch Cane (Arundinaria tecta) is found from Maryland south to Alabama and Mississippi. The stems (= culms) are usually less than six feet tall. This species forms colonies in moist areas such as margins of streams and moist areas in woods and pine barrens. Giant cane (A. gigantea), now considered the same species, has stems (= culms) to over 20 feet. A. gigantea is found from North Carolina south to Florida, and west to southern Illinois, Oklahoma, and Texas.

Arundinaria genus (Cane or bamboo) has  two species.  It is native to the southeastern United States.  There are  8-12 flowers in the spikelets.  Various other  species have been transferred to other genera such as Indocalamus, Pleioblastus, Pseudosasa,  Sasaella,  Sinarundinaria, Thamnocalamus,  and Yushania.  It is noted that  "The Manual of the Grasses of the United States" by Hitchcock published in 1950 lists two species in this genus: A. gigantea and A. tecta.  However, it is also noted that Kartesz combines these two species into A. gigantea with A. tecta listed as A. gigantea ssp tecta.  Kartesz  also moves  Pleioblastus simonii to this genus.

Bamboo Tribe reaches its greatest development in the tropical oriental region. It is represented in the United States by only several species. Included in this tribe is the giant cane of the south central United States that can grow to well over twenty feet in height.

Grass family (Gramineae to Poaceae) is a worldwide family of greatest economic importance.

Important plants, such as wheat, oats, corn, and rice, are found in this family. Mr. A.S. Hitchcock's two-volume Manual of the Grasses, revised by Agnes Chase, is recommended for the serious student of the grasses of the United States. Identification of grasses is difficult and a unique special vocabulary has developed to study this family. (Awns, glumes, lemmas, etc are some of the words most frequently used.)  The grasses are usually divided into several tribes to facilitate their study. Tribes in this reference are outlined according to Hitchcock.

Glumiflorae are a group of Monocots that contain the grasses and the sedges. (The similar-looking rushes, which are more closely related to the lilies, are usually not placed here.)

Monocots are a large group of plants usually characterized by having leaves with parallel veins and a seed with a single shell. Most flowers are created with multiples of three. In  the older botany texts, the Monocots were considered more primitive than the Dicots. However, many recent authors have placed the Monocots as an offshoot of the primitive Dicots. Here they are placed before the Dicots.

Seed plants (Phylum Embryophyta) are generally grouped into one large phylum containing three major classes: the Gymnosperms, the Monocots, and the Dicots. (Some scientists separate the Gymnosperms into a separate phylum and refer to the remaining plants as flowering plants or Angiospermae.)

For North American counts of the number of species in each genus and family, the primary reference has been John T. Kartesz, author of A Synonymized Checklist of the Vascular Flora of the United States, Canada, and Greenland (1994). The geographical scope of his lists include, as part of greater North America, Hawaii, Alaska, Greenland, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands.

Kartesz lists 21,757 species of vascular plants comprising the ferns, gymnosperms and flowering plants as being found in greater North America (including Alaska, Hawaii, Greenland, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands).

There are estimates within the scientific world that about half of the listed North American seed plants were originally native with the balance being comprised of Eurasian and tropical plants that have become established.

Plant kingdom contains a large variety of different organisms including mosses, ferns, and seed plants. Most plants manufacture their energy from sunlight and water. Identification of many species is difficult in that most individual plants have characteristics that have variables based on soil moisture, soil chemistry, and sunlight.

Because of the difficulty in learning and identifying different plant groups, specialists have emerged that study only a limited group of plants. These specialists revise the taxonomy and give us detailed descriptions and ranges of the various species.  Their results are published in technical journals and written with highly specialized words that apply to a specific group.

On the other hand, there are the nature publishers. These people and companies undertake the challenging task of trying to provide easy to use pictures and descriptions to identify those species.