Page 30 - Transitioning Turfgrass

TRANSITIONING TURFGRASS

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Study on the Naturalization

Process of Roughs

Stefano Macolino, Cristina Pornaro, Department of Agronomy, Food, Natural Resources, Animals, and
Environment, University of Padova (Italy)

Golf courses are mainly characterized by plant per year. Dickinson and Polwart (1982) found an
communities with simplified botanical composi- increase of litter accumulation, together with a re-
tion (Pornaro et al., 2018). Improving naturalized duction in belowground biomass, and forbs inva-
rough helps to enhance golf courses biodiversity sion following cessation of mowing. These studies
and allows to reduce management inputs (Brame, highlight that maintenance practices play a key
2012; Gross and Eckenrode, 2012; Dobbs, 2013). role in the succession of most plant communities
Little information is available on the importance since they influence botanical composition and
of naturalized rough for the increase of plant and competition among species. The time at which
wildlife biodiversity and habitat complexity of golf the mowing occurs may also affect species com-
courses. However, if these areas consist of wild position as a delayed cutting allows for seeds to
plants, they can restore grass communities in a be released into the soil which can improve the
highly urbanized area which also represents eco- species seed bank (Williams, 1984). However,
logical corridors that host many plant and animal Parr and Way (1988) delayed the date of a single
species for the benefit of the environment and of cut from June to July but found no differences in
the landscape (Pornaro et al., 2018). long-term species richness.
We found only few studies comparing plots The objective of this study was to characterize
mowed at a standard turf height to unmowed the vegetation of recently naturalized roughs of
plots, since unmanaged plant communities are Golf della Montecchia (Venetian Valley, Italy)
rarely found in recreational and aesthetic turf- through the analysis of spatial distribution of nat-
grasses. In an 18-year experiment on roadsides, uralized roughs by means of GPS. Naturalized
Parr and Way (1988) observed a gradual increase roughs were divided into sections homogeneous
in species richness with increasing numbers of cuts for their vegetation structure and in particular for

Lolium
Woody and Lolium Agrostis Elytrigia Festuca Cynodon
GROUP shrubby perenne stolonifera repens (L.) rubra arundinaceum dactylon
ID (Schreb.)
cover (%) L. (%) L. (%) Beauv. (%) L. (%) (L.) Pers. (%)
Darbysh. (%)
1 82 1 0 3 3 2 3
2 22 0 5 11 15 23 80
3 34 13 8 14 28 13 11
4 20 20 17 8 62 26 39
Table 1 Mean percentage of woody and shrubby ground cover and mean percentage of dominant grasses of groups
identified with the cluster analysis on 101 naturalized rough sections at Golf della Montecchia (northeaster Italy).

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