It's tough being turf. You get ripped up, mowed down, whacked, and trampled—by cleats, lawn mowers, five irons, and linebackers the size of refrigerators. And that's only if you make it to the field. Every year, dozens of new grass varieties are sprung upon the American public: TifSport, Mohawk, Axcella, Princess 77, each one meant to conquer some fraction of the 30 million acres of lawn, golf course, athletic field, public park, cemetery, and sod farm in the United States.

Most of the new grasses are just genetic tweakings of pre-existing models—the botanical equivalent of a "new and improved" paper towel. Once in a great while, however, a new grass surfaces that promises to reshape the turfscape. Ron Duncan, a turf scientist at the University of Georgia, thinks he's onto one. Popularly known as seashore paspalum (Paspalum vaginatum to turf geeks), Duncan's grass is notable less for what it does than for what it doesn't do: drink much. It requires as little as half the water of some flashier grasses, and it can subsist on seawater. "It's fitting into a niche that hasn't been there before," Duncan says. "This is a grass whose time has come."

Once upon a time, three or four decades ago, the turf industry had no niches. The goal was to find generalists—grasses that worked for most people in most places. It was one-grass-fits-all. Then farmland gave way to suburbs, housing developments, and fields of leisure: 50 million lawns, 700,000 athletic grounds, 14,500 golf courses. Turf grasses were specialized: warm season or cold season; arid, boggy, sunny, shady; lawn sod, golf sod, football sod. Turf today is a $45-billion-a-year industry. The University of Georgia alone has seven turf researchers studying everything from genetics and soil science to plant pathology, nutrient uptake, and insect management. An undergraduate can major in turf.

The field is dominated by a handful of tried-and-true species: Bermuda grass, fescue, Kentucky bluegrass, and a few others. There are more than 200 commercially available cultivars of perennial ryegrass alone. Still, enterprising researchers continue to scout the world for new turf contenders. Forget virgin rain forests or remote tropical islands: Researchers comb parking lots, old parks, and highway median strips—"areas that really beat grasses up," one turf scientist says. "They're looking for grasses that basically look like survivors." One formerly popular grass, Manhattan, was discovered growing wild in Central Park. Another, Merion, was found on a golf course in Pennsylvania.

Needless to say, not every grass makes the cut. The chief lawn grass criteria are fertility and "mowability": A lawn shouldn't grow too fast (otherwise it may require mowing more than once a week), and when it is cut, it should come back neat and tidy, not frayed and dead on the ends. Golf and sport turfs face stiffer challenges. Ideal golf greens should be soft and spongy, yet firm enough to give good "bounce." In one classic golf sod test, farm eggs are dropped onto turf candidates from a height of 11 feet to see how many break. (None, ideally.) And there are stress tests. These range from the straightforward—careering across a sod farm in a golf cart—to the mechanically complex. With giant rollers and rubber-rod beaters, scientists simulate the umpteen body slams and foot falls turf may be asked to endure, not to mention the effects of the seeders, sodders, scarifiers, rock removers, and other machinery designed to maintain it.

"There's probably as much art as science in turf grass science," says Kevin Morris, spokesman for the National Turf Evaluation Program, a nonprofit organization that tries to standardize the analysis of commercial grasses. "You have to understand the science, but the art part makes it fun."

The 50 million lawns in the United States consume 270 billion gallons of water every week—enough to give everyone in the world a shower four days in a row. Each year, those lawns are slathered with 67 million pounds of pesticides and mowed by machines that use 580 million gallons of gasoline.

 

The hottest area of research, Morris says, is drought tolerance. The current generation of turf grew up on cheap fertilizers and limitless freshwater. No longer. Urban water shortages are more frequent, even in traditionally soggy states like Pennsylvania. By law, residents in desert areas of Los Angeles County can water their lawns only with recycled dishwashing or bathing water.

 

Paspalum may be one answer. That grass can get by on as little as half the water required by Bermuda grasses, not to mention only half to two-thirds the amount of fertilizer. In addition, Paspalum

feeds on a wavelength of ultraviolet light that other turf grasses don't use, enabling it to thrive in shady or cloudy situations. "Imagine growing green grass in a domed stadium 365 days a year," Duncan says. "That's the next generation of grasses."


 

Duncan first came across Paspalum in 1992, when a colleague sent him a clump. It was dark green, waxy leaved, fine textured, and plain lovely. So Duncan read up. Varieties of Paspalum vaginatum, he learned, thrive along coasts around the world; genetic analysis revealed that it evolved originally in South Africa, then traveled to West Africa, South America, and the United States after the 16th century. Duncan suspects the grass spread with the slave trade; it grows on dunes and would have been readily available as bedding. He has found Paspalum

growing in former slaving ports in eastern states.

 

Paspalum

owes its drought resistance to a combination of factors. Its roots are particularly strong, so they can burrow into hard, dry soils, and they are unusually good at drawing oxygen from compacted, oxygen-poor soils. But what sets the grass apart is its tolerance for salt. Every plant works hard to maintain proper salt levels in the cytoplasm of its cells. Too much salt inside a cell degrades or destroys the enzymes necessary for producing energy. At the same time, if too much salt collects in the soil around the plant, a pressure differential arises, and water is sucked from the roots by osmosis. Some plants manage salt by blocking its uptake; others absorb it and spit it out later. But few can tolerate salinities much higher than 0.5 percent above freshwater.

 

That poses a problem. Cities in the South and in the West have begun to require homeowners and golf courses to use gray water, such as the water that runs out of a clothes washer or the kitchen sink, for lawns. It often is too saline for standard turf grasses. Golf courses along the coast contort themselves, protecting their turf from ocean spray. Paspalum,

in contrast, soaks up salt, then squirrels it away in little pouches, or vacuoles, inside its cells, walled off from the tender, energy-producing mechanics within the cytoplasm. Duncan has found dozens of varieties of the grass over the years, in mangrove swamps and low-lying bogs; some can remain submerged under brackish water for as long as a month.

 

From a burgeoning collection of Paspalum varieties, Duncan has bred, crossbred, refined, and licensed two cultivars called Sea Isle 1 and Sea Isle 2000. For the past two years, the Houston Astros baseball team has played on Paspalum in its home stadium. A golfer can find Paspalum

on courses across all the tee-able continents. It's not too much of a stretch to say that some of the world's most exclusive country clubs owe their success to the beds of slaves. (Augusta is not one of them.)

 

In return for all its admirable qualities, Paspalum

asks for only one thing: an occasional salt fix. Once a year, the Houston Astros' groundskeepers must lay on a micronutrient. "What it is, is Morton Salt," Duncan says. "You don't put much on, about the same as what you'd put on your eggs in the morning." So let the games go on—after the champion has eaten breakfast.

 

 

 

The University of Georgia's College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences Web site has information on seashore paspalum, including lists of cultivars and photos of the turf in situ at golf courses throughout the United States: www.griffin.peachnet.edu/cssci/turf/paspalum/paspalum.htm

.

 

The Lawn Institute offers practical, extremely pro-lawn guidance to help consumers select and care for the grass beneath their feet and around their houses: www.turfgrasssod.org/lawninstitute/index.html

.

 

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has tips for eco-friendly lawn care: www.nrcs.usda.gov/partners/for_homeowners.html.