Switch cane (Arundinaria tecta) used to cover vast areas of the southeastern United States. Given the chance, the plant will form impenetrable canebrakes, like this one I was trying to “swim” through in South Carolina’s Francis Marion National Forest. According to John James Audubon, the King rail (https://www.askaudubon.net/birds/300) likes to eat the seeds of Switch cane. And there’s no question King rails travel through canebrakes much more easily than the one through which I thrashed in the Francis Marion.
