Fairways: Agrostis/RyeGrass -- Greens: Agrostis

[Paul Jones]

I am watching the European Tour on the Golf Channel and the screen popup with Today's Playing Conditions.  List below was: Fairways: Agrostis/RyeGrass     Greens: Agrostis

I never heard of Agrostis grass before? ...but then again I have never been to Morocco before either.

What is agrostis grass and is it native to certain regions?

[Paul Jones]

Ok, so I looked up the defition on www.merriam-webster.com:

Definition of AGROSTIS

 : a large and widely distributed genus of grasses having an open or contracted panicle with small one-flowered spikelets and including important pasture, hay, and lawn grasses — see bent, redtop

Fron the definition, I am assuming it is a strand of bent.

[Marty Bonnar]

Typical of useless idiot broadcasters to mix nomenclatures willy-nilly.
Either use the common terms: Bent/Ryegrass
or use the Latin: Agrostis/Lolium
but please not some strangulated combination of both.
This wasn't Sky, perchance?

FBD.

[Adrian_Stiff]

Agrostis is just the latin name.

[Cory Brown]

That is correct.  The latin name for bentgrass is Agrostis so it is mixed nomenclature.  The exception to this rule however is Poa annua, also known as annual bluegras, or annual meadowgrass.  The latin name has generally taken over as the common name for that particular species.

[Kyle Harris]

Agrostis stolonifera is Creeping Bentgrass (one word).

Things like Penncross, L-93, A-1 are cultivated varieties of Creeping Bentgrass.

[Steve Okula]

Agrostis, which should always be written in italics with a capital "A" is the genus of over one hundred species of grasses.

These include the common golf turf species of:
                                                                       A.  stolinifera or
                                                                                        palustris - creeping bentgrass
                                                                       A. canina             - velvet bentgrass
                                                                          A. tenuis           - browntop
                                                                   A. capillaris              - colonial bentgrass

Within each turf species of bentgrass there are a multitude of varieties, especially with the creeping bent (Penncross, Pennlinks, A-1, A-4, Crenshaw, Providence, G-2, Cobra, etc.)

As pointed out above, ryegrasses are species of the genus Lolium. It should be written "ryegrass", without the hyphen.

[BCrosby]

Steve - Help me understand the genus/species relationship between ryegrass and bent. Are they cousin species under the same genus or is one higher up the ladder than the other? Would it be correct to say that bent is a type or ryegrass?

Thanks.

[Kyle Harris]

Steve - Help me understand the genus/species relationship between ryegrass and bent. Are they cousin species under the same genus or is one higher up the ladder than the other? That is, would it be correct to say that bent a type or ryegrass?

Thanks.

No.

Different species. Different genus.

Perennial Ryegrass: Lolium perenne
Annual Ryegrass: Lolium multiflorum

Annual Bluegrass Poa annua
Kentucky Bluegrass Poa pratensis

I wrote a brief essay on Annual Bluegrass a few weeks ago: http://kylewharris.com/2011/03/08/know-your-turf-annual-bluegrass/

[David Harshbarger]

Kyle,

I love your blog site, and it looks great on an iPad.  Your discussion of strategy is very keen, IMHO.

Here in the NE, what would you recommend for a home putting green that would be relatively low maintenance?

Dave

[Steve Okula]

Steve - Help me understand the genus/species relationship between ryegrass and bent. Are they cousin species under the same genus or is one higher up the ladder than the other? Would it be correct to say that bent is a type or ryegrass?

The botanical, latin, or scientific names follow the rules of scientific biological classification;

Kingdom – Plantae, Plants
 Division- Magnoliophyta, flowering plants
 Class – Lilliopsida, monocotyledonous plant (characterized by a single shoot arising from
                                                                              germinating seed, and having parallel veins)
Family – Poaceae, grass plant
Genus – Agrostis         
 Species – stolonifera            
 Variety – “Penncross”

A ryegrass plant, Lolium, would follow the same classification all the way down to genus, where it would diverge from bentgrass.