Why Grow
Grass?
by
John Merrill
You
may have asked yourself this question at one time or another. It's like
a
curious child's question that goes something like: Daddy, why is the
sky
blue?
Daddy, what is the wind? or Daddy, why do Democrats hate Republicans?
Uh...
We
grow grass for one reason: we can mow it. Grass is one of the few
plants
that
can survive a good mowing, it even thrives on being mown. Ah, a
contradiction
of sorts. Any other plant, even most other grasses would die
from
being cut by a third every week. There are over 10,000 species of
grass,
yet only about 50 of those grasses are suitable for use in a lawn.
These
are what are called turf grasses.
Why
can a turf grass be regularly mown without dying and still maintain a
healthy
and attractive appearance? Unlike most plants, turf grasses grow
from
the base of the plant, down there just above the soil level at place
called
the crown. The growing zone is well below the sharpened rotating lawn
mower
blade. Other plants grow at the tips and don't respond well to being
repeatedly
cut.
The
process of mowing actually reduces the plants total leaf surface and
this
in turn reduces its ability to use photosynthesis. Photosynthesis is
the
process that takes carbon dioxide from the air (the stuff we exhale
when
we
breathe) and turns it into carbohydrates that the plant uses for food.
The
food is the used to create more plant cells that go into either the
leaf
or
the root system. When the plant looses some of this ability use
photosynthesis,
it overcompensates by producing additional leaves or by
sending
out additional roots that in some turf grasses, will send up a new
grass
plant. The result: an even thicker, denser lawn.
So,
the answer to the question "why grow grass?" is: because it's the one
plant
that adapts best for the environment we've created for ourselves. Now
about
those Democrats and Republicans...
John
Merrill is editor of Landscape-America.com and American-Lawns.com
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