Cool-season grasses grow most efficiently in fairly cool, moist environments, usually blooming in spring, going dormant midsummer, and growing rapidly fall–winter.Whether a grass is "cool-season" or "warm-season" is based on the species' chemical and metabolic pathways for most efficiently conducting photosynthesis. Grasses are separated into two groups based on their peak growing time. Examples include perennial ryegrass, orchard grass, little bluestem, prairie dropseed, eastern gama grass, blue and hairy grama, poverty grass, and Timothy. Bunchgrasses form tufts or clumps, as new plants (tillers) form right beside the parent plant, the new stems growing upward instead of outward.Examples of sod-forming grasses include Kentucky bluegrass, prairie cordgrass, Johnson grass, tall fescue, Indian grass, big bluestem, buffalo grass, Bermuda grass, and zoysia. They spread horizontally across or just under the ground, forming an intermeshed, matlike colony. They’re popular in lawns and pastures. Sod-forming grasses, or turf grasses, form new plants on horizontal stems (rhizomes or stolons) much as iris or strawberry plants do.Growth habit is a major distinction among grasses: Grasses differ by life cycle, growth habit, and the seasonal peak growing time.Īs with other nonwoody plants, some grass species are annual (reseeding themselves each year, with individual plants dying each winter) and others are perennial (individual plants surviving for more than one year). Plants in the rush family have round but solid stems, basal leaves, closed sheaths, flowers with similar-looking sepals and petals, and many-seeded capsules that are round in cross-section. Similar species: Plants in the sedge family usually have 3-sided, solid stems, 3-ranked leaves, closed sheaths, flowers with scales at the base, and nutlike fruits (achenes). Florets (individual flowers) are grouped into spikelets, which can grow in spikes, racemes, panicles, and other arrangements. Flowers lack sepals and obvious petals instead they are enclosed by scale-like glumes, lemmas, and paleas.
Stems are round in cross-section, and hollow except at the nodes (joints where new leaves or branches arise). The sheaths are often open (split) and have ligules (a membrane or group of hairs where the leaf blade joins the stem). Grasses are annual or perennial plants with linear, parallel-veined, 2-ranked leaves whose lower portions sheath the stems (culms). Distinguishing between the species can be difficult, but it’s easy to learn some basics about the group. Missouri has about 276 species in the grass family, including well-known crop plants and our native prairie grasses.
0 kommentar(er)
