MGCSA Hole Notes June 2016

Leaf angle has been shown tolerance. Kowalewski et al. (2015) to be positively correlated with used the same scale in categorizing wear tolerance; that is more upright leaf angles of hybrid bermudagrass, genotypes tend to show less wear however they found no correlation symptoms in trials than horizontal- between angle and wear tolerance. leaved genotypes. Glab et al. (2015) This may have been due to very observed this trend in their analysis little variability amongst the berof seven cool-season turfgrass wear mudagrass genotypes evaluated, as tolerance characteristics. Velvet they all fell under the semihorizonbentgrass had more upright leaf an- tal category. gles compared

to creeping It has been bentgrass and suggested showed more

by Brosnan wear tolerance et al. (2005) (Dowgiewicz that there et al., 2011). may be a Brosnan et al. practical (2005) develreason why oped the 1-4 upright leaf scale to label angles correleaf angle of late with less Kentucky bluewear damgrass varieties age. Plants terming them with horiWear damage from a golfer standing in one spot horizontal, zontal leaf while practice putting (credit: Sam Bauer) semihorizonangles prestal, semivertical, and vertical. They ent more surface area, thus more found that leaf angle accounted biomass on the horizontal plane in for most of the variation and that which it grows. With more biomass larger angles (more vertical than exposed to vertical forces, increased horizontal) were amongst the most wear damage may occur than with highlighted possible feature of wear biomass less exposed. However, this Page 26