Most of them are native to mountain habitats in Latin America, from Mexico to southern Chile and Argentina.

Some animals are, to various extents, associated with stands of Chusquea, for example the Inca wren, monito del monte, and the plushcap.

Chusquea culeou, the Chilean feather bamboo or colihue cane, from southern Chile and adjacent western Argentina, is notable as the most frost-tolerant South American bamboo and the only one that has been grown successfully to any extent in the temperate Northern Hemisphere, with successful growth as an ornamental plant north to Scotland.

The colihue cane was used by the Mapuches Indians to make instruments and as lances during the War of Arauco.

[3] The genus Chusquea now includes species formerly classified in Dendragrostis, Rettbergia, Swallenochloa, and Neurolepis.