''Agrostis stolonifera'' (creeping bentgrass, creeping bent, fiorin, spreading bent or carpet bentgrass) is a

perennial A perennial plant or simply perennial is a plant that lives more than two years. The term ('' per-'' + '' -ennial'', "through the years") is often used to differentiate a plant from shorter-lived annuals and biennials. The term is also wid ...

grass species in the family Poaceae.

Description

''Agrostis stolonifera'' is stoloniferous and may form mats or tufts. The prostrate stems of this species grow to long with long leaf blades and a panicle reaching up to in height. The ligule is pointed and up to long. This differs from common bent, ''

Agrostis capillaris ''Agrostis capillaris'', the common bent, colonial bent, or browntop, is a rhizomatous and stoloniferous perennial in the grass family ( Poaceae). It is native to Eurasia and has been widely introduced in many parts of the world. Colonial be ...

'', 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

spikelet A spikelet, in botany, describes the typical arrangement of the flowers of grasses, sedges and some other Monocots. Each spikelet has one or more florets. The spikelets are further grouped into panicles or spikes. The part of the spikelet that ...

s are red and tightly closed within the panicle. 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 A riparian zone or riparian area is the interface between land and a river or stream. Riparian is also the proper nomenclature for one of the terrestrial biomes of the Earth. Plant habitats and communities along the river margins and banks a ...

zones, and as a

pioneer species Pioneer species are hardy species that are the first to colonize barren environments or previously biodiverse steady-state ecosystems that have been disrupted, such as by wildfire. Pioneer flora Some lichens grow on rocks without soil, so ...

on disturbed sites. It is native to

Eurasia Eurasia (, ) is the largest continental area on Earth, comprising all of Europe and Asia. Primarily in the Northern and Eastern Hemispheres, it spans from the British Isles and the Iberian Peninsula in the west to the Japanese archipelago ...

and

North Africa North Africa, or Northern Africa is a region encompassing the northern portion of the African continent. There is no singularly accepted scope for the region, and it is sometimes defined as stretching from the Atlantic shores of Mauritania in ...

(

Algeria ) , image_map = Algeria (centered orthographic projection).svg , map_caption = , image_map2 = , capital = Algiers , coordinates = , largest_city = capital , relig ...

Morocco Morocco (),, ) officially the Kingdom of Morocco, is the westernmost country in the Maghreb region of North Africa. It overlooks the Mediterranean Sea to the north and the Atlantic Ocean to the west, and has land borders with Algeria t ...

and

Tunisia ) , image_map = Tunisia location (orthographic projection).svg , map_caption = Location of Tunisia in northern Africa , image_map2 = , capital = Tunis , largest_city = capital , ...

). It is possible that it may also be native to northern parts of North America, and in any case it has been widely introduced and naturalised on that continent and in many other places. It is a constituent of wet habitats such as marshy grasslands. Some of its species have 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''. It is used for

turf Sod, also known as turf, is the upper layer of soil with the grass growing on it that is often harvested into rolls. In Australian and British English, sod is more commonly known as ''turf'', and the word "sod" is limited mainly to agricult ...

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 The Monsanto Company () was an American agrochemical and agricultural biotechnology corporation founded in 1901 and headquartered in Creve Coeur, Missouri. Monsanto's best known product is Roundup, a glyphosate-based herbicide, developed in ...

led early work in creeping bentgrass transgenics looked at

glyphosate Glyphosate (IUPAC name: ''N''-(phosphonomethyl)glycine) is a broad-spectrum systemic herbicide and crop desiccant. It is an organophosphorus compound, specifically a phosphonate, which acts by inhibiting the plant enzyme 5-enolpyruvylshik ...

-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 The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) is the federal executive department responsible for developing and executing federal laws related to farming, forestry, rural economic development, and food. It aims to meet the needs of com ...

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

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stolonifera Stolonifera is a suborder of soft corals in the order Alcyonacea. Members of this taxon are characterised by having separate polyps budding off an encrusting horizontal, branching stolon. The skeletons include spicules or consists of a horny exte ...

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