''Agrostis stolonifera'' (creeping bentgrass, creeping bent, fiorin, spreading bent or carpet bentgrass) is a perennial grass species in the family

Poaceae Poaceae () or Gramineae () is a large and nearly ubiquitous family of monocotyledonous flowering plants commonly known as grasses. It includes the cereal grasses, bamboos and the grasses of natural grassland and species cultivated in lawns an ...

. It is widely used as turf for golf courses.

Description

''Agrostis stolonifera'' is

stoloniferous In biology, stolons (from Latin '' stolō'', genitive ''stolōnis'' – "branch"), also known as runners, are horizontal connections between organisms. They may be part of the organism, or of its skeleton; typically, animal stolons are external ...

and may form mats or tufts. The prostrate stems of this species grow to long with long leaf blades and a

panicle A panicle is a much-branched inflorescence. (softcover ). Some authors distinguish it from a compound spike inflorescence, by requiring that the flowers (and fruit) be pedicellate (having a single stem per flower). The branches of a panicle are of ...

reaching up to in height. The

ligule A ligule (from "strap", variant of ''lingula'', from ''lingua'' "tongue") is a thin outgrowth at the junction of leaf and leafstalk of many grasses (Poaceae) and sedges. A ligule is also a strap-shaped extension of the corolla, such as that of a ...

is pointed and up to long. This differs from common bent, '' Agrostis capillaris'', which is short and does not come to a point. The leaves are tapering, often with a blue-grey colour. The grass is not tufted and the spikelets are red and tightly closed within the

. It flowers in July and August. Agrostis ligula

Distribution

It can be found growing in a variety of habitats including woodlands, grasslands and meadows, wetlands, riparian zones, and as a pioneer species on disturbed sites. It is native to Eurasia and North Africa ( Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia). It is possible that it may also be native to northern parts of

North America North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere and almost entirely within the Western Hemisphere. It is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South America and the Car ...

, and in any case it has been widely introduced and

naturalised Naturalization (or naturalisation) is the legal act or process by which a non-citizen of a country may acquire citizenship or nationality of that country. It may be done automatically by a statute, i.e., without any effort on the part of the in ...

on that continent and in many other places. It is a constituent of wet habitats such as marshy grasslands. Some of its specieshave adapted to contaminated conditions and can cope with heavy metals. It can exist up to .

Cultivation

It is the most commonly used species of ''

Agrostis ''Agrostis'' (bent or bentgrass) is a large and very nearly cosmopolitan genus of plants in the grass family, found in nearly all the countries in the world. It has been bred as a GMO creeping bent grass. Species * '' Agrostis aequivalvi'' ...

''. It is used for turf in gardens and landscapes, particularly on golf courses. Many of the putting greens as well as an increasing number of fairways in the northern USA are creeping bentgrass.

Transgenic Varieties

In the 1990s, Scotts Miracle-Gro and Monsanto led early work in creeping bentgrass transgenics looked at glyphosate-resistance. However, due to easy wind pollination, seeds were accidentally dispersed from an experimental farm in Oregon in 2003. Scotts Miracle-Gro was fined $500,000 as a result. In 2017, the USDA agreed not to regulate it at Scotts request, which meant that Scotts "will no longer be legally required to pay to clean up the grass after 2017, though it has promised to do so." A 2004 gene flow study (with scientific sampling methods) documents gene flow on a landscape level, with a maximum at and (respectively) in ''sentinel'' and ''resident plants'' observed by scientist, located in primarily nonagronomic places such as irrigation ditches. Other work in transgenic bentgrass looks into salinity tolerance. The improved performance of the transgenic plants was associated with higher relative water content, higher sodium uptake and lower solute leakage in leaf tissues, with higher concentrations of Na+, K+, Cl- and total phosphorus in root tissues, and with higher auxin accumulation rate in the root tissue. This transgenic plant can survive in the presence of 1.7% sodium chloride (half seawater salinity concentration), while the non transgenic line and wild type plants cannot.ZHIGANG LI, Christian M. Baldwin, Qian Hu, Haibo Liu, Hong Luo (2010). Heterologous Expression of Arabidopsis H+-PPase Enhances Salt Tolerance in Transgenic Creeping Bentgrass (Agrostis stolonifera L.). Plant, Cell and Environ, Volume 33 Issue 2, P. 272–289.

References

{{Authority control stolonifera Flora of Asia Flora of Europe Flora of North Africa Flora of Western Asia Lawn grasses Plants described in 1753 Taxa named by Carl Linnaeus