A Gram-stain-positive, aerobic, motile by gliding, rod-shaped bacterial strain, THG-GM18(T), was isolated from soil of a bamboo grove. Strain THG-GM18(T) was able to grow in the presence of up to 6.0% (w/v) NaCl, at 4-37 degrees C and at pH 7.0-10.0 in R2A medium. Based on 16S rRNA gene sequence similarity, strain THG-GM18(T) was closely related to species of the genus Arthrobacter. The most closely related strains to strain THG-GM18(T) are Arthrobacter ramosus CCM 1646(T) (98.5% similarity), Arthrobacter nitroguajacolicus G2-1(T) (98.4%), Arthrobacter nicotinovorans DSM 420(T) (98.2%), Arthrobacter aurescens DSM 20116(T) (98.1 %) and Arthrobacter chlorophenolicus A6(T) (98.0 %). Strain THG-GM18(T) possessed chemotaxonomic properties consistent with those of members of the genus Arthrobacter, such as peptidoglycan type A3 alpha (L-Lys-L-Ala-L-Thr-L-Ala), MK-9 as major menaquinone and anteiso- and iso-branched compounds (anteiso-C-15:0, iso-C-16:0 and anteiso-C-17:0) as major cellular fatty acids. The polar lipid profile contained diphosphatidylglycerol, phosphatidylglycerol, an unidentified phosphoglycolloid, unidentified phospholipids, unidentified aminolipids, an unidentified glycolipid and unidentified lipids. The G+C content of the genomic DNA was 61.0 mol%. The DNA-DNA relatedness values between strain THG-GM18(T) and its closest phylogenetic neighbours were below 26.0%. The results of physiological and biochemical tests allowed the differentiation of strain THG-GM18(T) from species of the genus Arthrobacter with validly published names. Arthrobacter bambusae sp. nov. is the proposed name, and the type strain is THG-GM18(T) (=KACC 17531(T)=JCM 19335(T)).