Abstract: The fast-growing characteristic of bamboo means that it has strong assimilative capacity, which is closely related to photosynthetic pathway. By comparing with the typical C₃ plants Triticum aestivum and Oryza sativa as well as C₄ plants Zea mays and Sorghum vulgare, the typical pachymorph rhizome bamboo Phyllostachys edulis and leptomorph rhizome bamboo Dendrocalamus latiflorus were selected for the study of bamboo photosynthetic pathways based on the structure and chlorophyll fluorescence characteristics of leaves. Paraffin observations showed that the leaf structures of both D. latiflorus and Ph.edulis did not have the “kranz anatomy” and vesicular cells distributed. These characteristics were significantly different from those of C₄ plants such as Z. mays and S. vulgare, but were similar to those of T. aestivum and O. sativa belonging to C₃ plants. Meanwhile the results of chlorophyll fluorescence parameters demonstrated that the average values of Y(Ⅱ)of D. latiflorus and Ph. edulis were similar to that of T. aestivum and O. sativa, but were significantly higher than that of Z. mays and S. vulgare(P<0.01). The average values of q_N of D. latiflorus and Ph. edulis(0.77)were much lower than those of Z. mays and S. vulgare(P<0.05), while they were close to that of O. sativa (0.76). Correlation analysis showed that there were significant or extreme positive correlations among F_v/F_m, Y(Ⅱ)and q_N in O. sativa and T. aestivum. However, highly significant positive correlation did not existed in Z. mays and S. vulgare. The correlation between F_v/F_m and Y(Ⅱ)was demonstrated significantly positive in D. latiflorus and Ph. edulis which were similar to those of in C₃ plants. These results indicat that the type of photosynthetic pathway in D. latiflorus and Ph. edulis belongs to C₃ plants.