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Bluegrass – A Remarkable Plant
Bluegrass – A Remarkable Plant
I receive newsletters and e-zines from several universities' turf and ornamental programs and subscribe to Green Industry blog posts. They are a great source of current issues related to turf and ornamental problems and provide me with ideas to use for my own blog posts.
I just received a blog post from Iowa State University that described the remarkable recuperative power of bluegrass. Much of Iowa endured a severe drought this year. Lawns were brown and ugly all summer. Recently they have been receiving rain and the post described how quickly the grass recovered.
I have been in the lawn care industry since 1978 and have lived through some serious droughts during that time. I have always been amazed at how bluegrass lawns came back either that fall or the following spring after a drought. I knew that the grass would come back, but what I learned from the article was that the new plants were being generated from the rhizomes, or underground roots, that the grass produces and not necessarily from the existing plants that were growing at ground level.
The article explained that the rhizomes are actually a stem, not a root. The roots grow from the rhizome as well. Small buds grow on the rhizome and new shoots will grow from those buds. Since the rhizome is underground, it is more protected and can remain inactive for a long time. When they are needed for the survival of the grass, they will grow and form a new plant.
I borrowed these pictures from the blog post. The brown areas were actually caused by sheets of plywood that were left on top of the turf for too long of a time during the summer. The second picture shows the same area several months later, in October. This is the same type of recovery that can be seen on drought stressed areas. As you can easily see, bluegrass is a remarkable plant, if given enough time and water.