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The Might and Mystery of River Cane

UNC Asheville students learn the ecological and cultural significance of river cane by doing restoration work on campus

By UNC Asheville

July 16^th, 2025

Ecologist Adam Griffith shows UNC Asheville students two photos of a section of the Swannanoa River, one before and one after Hurricane Helene. In the after photo, massive swaths of land have been carried away by the surge of storm water — except for a small island in the middle, held in place by river cane.

“This tiny strip of cane stabilized an entire bar. That's the value of river cane, its extreme bank stability,” said Griffith, who works with the Cherokee Extension Extension Service.

River cane is a native species that grows in the riparian zone, or the land adjacent to a body of water. A bamboo-like grass, river cane has tall, thin stalks, slender leaves, and an incredible network of rhizomes, or roots, that can hold a riverbank together even in some of the most extreme erosion events.

Adam Griffith demonstrates the stability of river cane by showing how it withstood Helene's floodwaters.

As part of Lecturer Ashley Case’s Experiential Learning in Ecology class, UNC Asheville students learn how to harness the power of river cane by propagating it on campus, learning its cultural and ecological significance along the way.

“It’s really just the trifecta of stream restoration,” said Shaelyn Dossett, environmental science student. “The rhizomes are like hands holding the soil together so that it doesn't move.”

Holding the banks together is not just good for stability, it helps keep sediment out of the water. Sediment is the number one pollutant in North Carolina streams, said Griffith, low visibility can be detrimental for aquatic creatures needing to hunt and it can cause algal blooms that lead to fish kills.

“River cane is also a filter system for pollutants, fertilizer, fecal matter from cows and all the different things we put on agriculture that are harmful to our waterways,” Dossett said. “Its also a habitat for a lot of animals to nest, have shade and eat.”

Shaelyn Dossett (right) plants a river cane rhizome on the steam bank of Reed Creek in the Botanical Gardens.

River cane is also incredibly important to local indigenous peoples.

“This is a cultural keystone species, tribal member Levi West calls it ‘Cherokee plastic,’” Griffith said.

“It's used by almost every tribe of the Southeast, in virtually every aspect of their daily life: baskets for storing food, mats for preparing food, flat river cane mats for sleeping on, they would use sticks of river cane to make the walls of their houses, basket traps called creels used to catch fish, blowguns and more.”

Throughout the class, students focus on multiple topics of ecological restoration. For each one Case brought in experts, such as Griffith, to help educate students, and they read both scientific articles and essays on indigenous knowledge.

“We focused on indigenous ways of knowing, because a lot of what we're teaching in riparian repair, or in wetland repair, or just removing invasives, goes back to indigenous knowledge on how to not necessarily dominate over the land, but working in tune with the land,” Case said.

Adam Griffith tells UNC Asheville students about the myriad uses indigenous peoples have for river cane.

Jane Jeffrey, an environmental science and indigenous studies student, said the multidisciplinary elements of the class laid a groundwork for how she will think about ecological repair going forward.

“In our discussions, it came back a lot to our communities, how we interact with nature and vice versa. Sometimes comes the question of, ‘Are we doing this in a way that is actually productive? When is it not a good time to intervene? What is our place in it?’” Jeffrey said.

“I think that those conversations really helped me think of the complexity of restoration work, and doing work in a community. That can be applied in any discipline and useful to any person, not just a scientist.”

With learning about river cane, comes learning about the history of the region — past agricultural, scientific, and colonial practices that have had an impact on the ecosystem.

“It's cool, as an environmental scientist, to be placed a little bit more thoughtfully here,” Jeffrey said. “Thinking about, historically, what science has done, although good in some ways, there's a negative history there as well that's more complicated.”

UNC Asheville students marked where the river cane was planted for further research.

Jane Jeffreys (far right) said she appreciated how the class discussed many perspectives of ecological restoration work.

Students dig up river cane rhizomes along Reed Creek to propagate them and help rebuild the river cane population.

Prior to colonization, river cane was one of the most predominant plants along river ways, Case said. Up to 85-90 percent of river cane breaks have been lost, potentially up to 99 percent of large river cane habitat in the eastern U.S. Much of the population was destroyed by European colonists for farm land.

Griffith tells the students about the writings of colonial settlers which describe huge cane breaks as far as the eye can see.

“Now I've never seen a patch of river cane that is not bounded by a body of water on one side and a road or railroad on the other,” Griffith said. “It is confined to a narrow little strip.”

Despite its cultural and ecological significance, there’s a lot we don’t know about river cane and how to restore its population.

“My knowledge of river cane when I first started this class was zero,” Dossett said. “Which is not surprising because most people don't know anything about river cane, or at least it seems that way.”

After digging up the rhizome, students cut sections and store them in bags filled with dirt.

So while the class works to re-establish river cane in certain areas of campus, they are also gathering data that will hopefully help them learn more about best practices for propagating.

“We're doing a method that was first developed by Laura Young for a Virginia conservation initiative, where we go in and dig rhizomes and we cut them into sections with at least two nodes,” Case said. “I had students dig the rhizomes, count the number of nodes, measure the diameter as well as the length, and then we collected soil from on site and put them into plastic bags to keep them moist.”

Students dug rhizomes from the north and south sides of Reed Creek on campus, and a spot in the Botanical Gardens. After about a month, the rhizome sections had grown a new culm, or stem, and were ready to be replanted. They replanted in a spot of the creek that had been washed out by Helene, hopefully providing more stability to the stream bank.

“We have data collected for each of these river cane rhizomes. When we planted them, we wanted to make sure that they were still marked so we would know which one it was and how it was doing,” Jeffrey said. “Then we can look back on data from this experience, know what's working best, and implement that.”

Once the rhizomes have sprouted a new stem, students can replant the river cane.

A student holds up a river cane rhizome. Each one is measured so they can track its growth.

The area with newly planted river cane is roped off. Students will continue to observe this plot to better understand the propagation process.

Students measure the growth of the river cane cuttings before planting.

Dossett said this combination of research, hands-on experience, and community service is what interested her in this class.

“You have that set time to do this service work. If we all spent three hours a week doing something like this, our rivers and streams would look a lot better,” Dossett said.

“It's also helping with a stepping stone to future career goals, because you are learning new skills and meeting organizations that you could maybe work for one day, or someone who will be able to give you a job in the future. It’s one of the most impactful classes I’ve ever taken.”

Students say this class provided hands-on skills they can use in their careers in environmental science.

© 2026 UNC Asheville

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