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

perennial In horticulture, the term perennial ('' per-'' + '' -ennial'', "through the year") is used to differentiate a plant from shorter-lived annuals and biennials. It has thus been defined as a plant that lives more than 2 years. The term is also ...

grass species in the family

Poaceae Poaceae ( ), also called Gramineae ( ), is a large and nearly ubiquitous family of monocotyledonous flowering plants commonly known as grasses. It includes the cereal grasses, bamboos, the grasses of natural grassland and species cultivate ...

. It is widely used as turf for

golf course A golf course is the grounds on which the sport of golf is played. It consists of a series of holes, each consisting of a teeing ground, tee box, a #Fairway and rough, fairway, the #Fairway and rough, rough and other hazard (golf), hazards, and ...

Description

''Agrostis stolonifera'' is

stoloniferous In biology, a stolon ( from Latin '' stolō'', genitive ''stolōnis'' – "branch"), also known as a runner, is a horizontal connection between parts of an organism. It may be part of the organism, or of its skeleton. Typically, animal stolons ar ...

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

panicle In botany, 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 p ...

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 A leaf (: leaves) is a principal appendage of the plant stem, stem of a vascular plant, usually borne laterally above g ...

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 inflorescences 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 sp ...

s 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,

grassland A grassland is an area where the vegetation is dominance (ecology), dominated by grasses (Poaceae). However, sedge (Cyperaceae) and rush (Juncaceae) can also be found along with variable proportions of legumes such as clover, and other Herbaceo ...

s and meadows, wetlands,

riparian A riparian zone or riparian area is the interface between land and a river or stream. In some regions, the terms riparian woodland, riparian forest, riparian buffer zone, riparian corridor, and riparian strip are used to characterize a ripar ...

zones, and as a

pioneer species Pioneer species are resilient species that are the first to colonize barren environments, or to repopulate disrupted biodiverse steady-state ecosystems as part of ecological succession. Various kinds of events can create good conditions for pi ...

on disturbed sites. It is native to

Eurasia Eurasia ( , ) is a continental area on Earth, comprising all of Europe and Asia. According to some geographers, Physical geography, physiographically, Eurasia is a single supercontinent. The concept of Europe and Asia as distinct continents d ...

and

North Africa North Africa (sometimes Northern Africa) is a region encompassing the northern portion of the African continent. There is no singularly accepted scope for the region. However, it is sometimes defined as stretching from the Atlantic shores of t ...

(

Algeria Algeria, officially the People's Democratic Republic of Algeria, is a country in the Maghreb region of North Africa. It is bordered to Algeria–Tunisia border, the northeast by Tunisia; to Algeria–Libya border, the east by Libya; to Alger ...

Morocco Morocco, officially the Kingdom of Morocco, is a country in the Maghreb region of North Africa. It has coastlines on the Mediterranean Sea to the north and the Atlantic Ocean to the west, and has land borders with Algeria to Algeria–Morocc ...

and

Tunisia Tunisia, officially the Republic of Tunisia, is a country in the Maghreb region of North Africa. It is bordered by Algeria to the west and southwest, Libya to the southeast, and the Mediterranean Sea to the north and east. Tunisia also shares m ...

). It is possible that it may also be native to northern parts of

North America North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere, Northern and Western Hemisphere, Western hemispheres. North America is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South Ameri ...

, and in any case it has been widely introduced and

naturalised Naturalization (or naturalisation) is the legal act or process by which a non-national of a country acquires the nationality of that country after birth. The definition of naturalization by the International Organization for Migration of the ...

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 distribution, cosmopolitan genus of plants in the Poaceae, grass family, found in nearly all the countries in the world. It has been bred as a Genetically modified organis ...

''. It is used for

turf Sod is the upper layer of turf that is harvested for transplanting. Turf consists of a variable thickness of a soil medium that supports a community of turfgrasses. In British and Australian English, sod is more commonly known as ''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 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 ...

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 EPSP inhibitor, inhibiting the plant enzyme 5-en ...

-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 an United States federal executive departments, executive department of the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government that aims to meet the needs of commerc ...

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 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 temperate Asia Flora of tropical Asia Flora of Europe Flora of North Africa Lawn grasses Plants described in 1753 Taxa named by Carl Linnaeus