A few years ago I wrote about how everyone knows zoysia grows slower than bermuda, except when it doesn't. In particular, I was discussing the growth of the nuwan noi variety of manilagrass (Zoysia matrella) in tropical Southeast Asia.

One of the examples I used in that post was the expansion rate for patches of nuwan noi in the bermudagrass fairways at the Santiburi Samui Country Club. I was back at Samui this week, and I went to the 18^th hole to check the nuwan noi.

Just around the dogleg, and down the hill near the landing area, there is a large patch of nuwan noi that has overgrown the bermuda.

I paced it off, and the diameter of that particular patch is now 17 meters. If that started as a single plant in January 2007, and has now grown 8.5 meters in every direction, then the expansion is 850 cm in 125 months, or 6.8 cm per month.

This approximate rate keeps coming up in a number of measurements I've made. I have estimated the expansion at 7 to 8 cm per month. And in pot experiments, I get a similar rate too. For example, planting nuwan noi stolons at a rate of 1,500 nodes per square meter gives 1,500 nodes in 10,000 cm². If each node occupies 1 cm² at the start of the month, and then the coverage goes from 1,500 to 10,000 cm² by the end of the month, that's an expansion rate of 6.7 cm² for each plant in a month.

Why does this matter? Because I've hypothesized that the most sustainable grass for a given location is the one that has the most growth per unit of N and per unit of H₂O applied.

I went for a run to the ocean at Cerro Gordo. As is my wont, I looked for grasses along the way. There were lots of zoysia lawns where I started. Then I got on a trail and headed down to the water.

When I stopped along the ocean's edge, I enjoyed the view, but I didn't see any zoysia. I was reminded of the rocky shores of the islands in Okinawa. But in Okinawa, one will find lots of zoysia growing on the rocks and cliffs.

This is on the western tip of Ishigaki Island. Lots of zoysia growing wild. Why is the zoysia growing wild in the East China Sea, South China Sea, and Philippine Sea, but more in maintained turf areas in the Caribbean Sea?

I think the answer lies in the combination of light and temperature. Specifically, locations with a longer duration of time at high temperature combined with low light will have a prevalence of zoysia. These locations may also have zoysia that grows faster than bermuda (Cynodon) or paspalum.

I looked up the combination of temperature and sunshine hours on this customizable chart.

Locations on the chart to the right are hotter, and lower on the chart have less sunshine. The "trails" for each location trace the normal combination of temperature and sunshine for an entire year.

I looked up cumulative precipitation too. This should have an effect too, although for competition between species in managed turf, precipitation should be less important, because irrigation can be supplied.

I'd like to grow different species of grass in representative climates and measure how much they grow. I expect certain species would map to location, somewhat like the locations are separated in the chart below by temperature and light.

This poster for today's field day describes what happened when we planted five grass varieties as stolons and then supplied irrigation with different amounts of salt in the water. I think two things might surprise you. First, some of the grass varieties, including a particular manilagrass (Zoysia matrella), can reach full coverage in about one month after planting. Second, irrigation with salty water, so long as enough is applied, doesn't slow down the growth of many warm-season grasses.

When the grasses can grow like this, it shows that managing the problems with water quality are closely tied to the quantity of water supplied. I will be talking more about this tomorrow when we are back for another day of seminars.

These pictures were taken 28 days apart. Here's what the grasses looked like yesterday, on February 24. That was 4 weeks, exactly 28 days after planting.

On 27 January, five different grass varieties were planted from stolons. The grasses, shown from left to right, are:

• manilagrass (nuwan noi)
• tropical carpetgrass (yaa malay)
• seashore paspalum (salam)
• manilagrass (hosoba korai)
• bermudagrass (Tifway 419)

For the first 10 days after planting, all the grasses were irrigated with 330 TDS (total dissolved solids, in units of ppm) water. For the next 18 days, the grasses shown above were irrigated with 4,500 TDS water.

The planting rates for the stolons ranged from 99 g/m² for the nuwan noi to 312 g/m² for the yaa malay. This is the mean mass for the stolons planted in the pots. We cut the stolons into 10 segments with 3 nodes each and then weighed them and planted them; each 0.02 m² pot was planted with 30 nodes (1,500 nodes per square meter).

This is what the pots looked like immediately after planting, on January 27.

I think this is interesting for two reasons. One, this gives some indication of the grow-in rate (and relative rates) of various grass varieties. Second, this shows the tolerance or not of the grasses to different salt levels in the water.

One set of grasses is getting water with salt (TDS) at 330 ppm, the one pictured are getting 4,500 ppm, and another set are being irrigated with 9,000 ppm.

I'll be talking about this, and showing some of these grasses, at the upcoming Sustainable Turfgrass Management in Asia conference.

There was another successful shiba yaki (grass burning) ceremony at Korakuen last week.

More about grass burning in Japan in this post.

I don't like turf diseases. If there is any fun in them, for me, it lies in only two things. First, is it a particularly well-named disease? Second, how awful are the symptoms?

I enjoy learning disease names and finding those that have the most interesting names. Nothing against brown patch and yellow patch, but those are pretty bland. Dollar spot is more interesting, and elephant's footprint even more so.

Then there are the symptoms. All turf diseases, if left unchecked, can make some hideous symptoms. In their standard form, however, I find some to be more hideous than others. Yellow patch, anthracnose, red thread -- often present, but sometimes only visible to those actually looking for symptoms. Compare to a disease like large patch, which in its standard manifestation is monstrous.

Using those criteria of interesting names and hideous symptoms, one of my favorite diseases is inu no ashiato -- dog's footprint. The name is interesting, and the symptoms are moderately hideous. I was glad to see this new article by Tomaso-Peterson et al. about Curvularia malina sp. nov. inciting a new disease of warm-season turfgrasses in the southeastern United States. From the introduction:

A foliar disease of these warm-season turfgrasses is often observed following prolonged or significant precipitation events such as tropical storms and hurricanes. The disease manifests as distinct chocolate brown to black spots (2–15 cm diam) that appear on Cynodon dactylon or Zoysia matrella putting greens, fairways, and tee boxes. Under high disease pressure the dark spots may coalesce to form large, irregular areas of blighted turfgrass.

"Is this the same as dog's footprint," I wondered?

A Curvularia leaf blight affecting Zoysia spp. in Japan, referred to as dog footprint, shares symptomology to that observed on C. dactylon and Z. matrella in the southeastern United States ... Based on these reports, our hypothesis is that the sterile fungus associated with Curvularia blight and causing similar symptoms in stands of C. dactylon and Z. matrella in the southeastern United States is a novel species of Curvularia.

The species was identified as Curvularia malina.

To date, C. dactylon and Z. matrella are the only golf course grasses from which C. malina has been isolated. Disease epidemics on Z. matrella appear to be more severe than on C. dactylon based on visual field observations. The disease is most prevalent in the spring and fall, which are normally characterized by moderate temperatures and ample precipitation. Symptoms may persist into the summer if prevailing environmental conditions remain favorable and the turfgrass experiences stress from intensive management practices.

So far so good. Dog's footprint is more severe on Z. matrella in Asia than on C. dactylon. However, in Asia the disease is most prevalent in summer, or in conditions characterized by warm temperatures and ample precipitation.

Based on the results of our research, C. malina induces disease symptoms in warm-season turfgrasses similar to those associated with Curvularia leaf blight.

It seems dog's footprint is caused by C. malina. Manilagrass (Zoysia matrella) can get lots of diseases, but in a tropical environment, this species is infected by few diseases, with the most common being dog's footprint.

Here is dog's footprint on manilagrass at Hilo in March.

This is at Okinawa in August.

This is at Manila in August.

This is at Shizuoka in July.

Those are pretty typical symptoms. And they are all on a monostand of one type of manilagrass.

I've noticed that some manilagrass varieties are often showing dog's footprint symptoms, and other varieties rarely do. I usually see this at two different locations in the same town. For example, lots of dog's footprint at site X, and then an hour later at site Y, a slightly different type of manilagrass has no dog's footprint.

Last July, I saw this at one location, on a golf course fairway with a mixed stand of different Z. matrella (korai) varieties and with some patches of C. dactylon.

On one variety of korai, lots of dog's footprint. On the Cynodon and other variety of korai, none.

This disease is ubiquitous on susceptible varieties in East and Southeast Asia. Finding varieties that are less susceptible seems quite possible.

Fred Varcoe wrote about putting greens on Japanese golf courses in the August 2016 issue of Euro Biz Japan. The article, Know your greens (pdf, 3 MB), includes some quotes from me about bentgrass, korai, and how balls roll on putting greens.

For more about the two green system in Japan, see:

• The two green system
• Grass species and the two green system
• Golf course maintenance at Japan
• Not the usual everyday maintenance
• Golf in Japan, Mt. Fuji, and the two green system

And kind of on this same topic, but of more general interest, see Paul Jansen's post on The Japanese Golf Experience.  You'll see more than just grass: breakfast beer, tiny hotel rooms, hot springs, cold springs, blue balls, green tea, and a volcanic eruption.

When Eric Reasor came to Thailand in July, he brought along measuring tools to assess how golf balls roll across putting greens.

He visited 22 golf courses in 5 days. Here's a map with the locations visited marked as an orange ⊕.

The primary measurement he made was rolling balls using a customized Perfect Putter, so that all balls were launched on their roll at the same line and with the same pace.

Each ball was marked where it stopped.

Then the width and length of the dispersion area was recorded. Sometimes the balls dispersed a lot before they stopped.

On other rolls, or other greens, the dispersion was relatively small.

The purpose of the project is to study what factors influence the dispersion of the ball as it rolls across the green. Is it the grass species? Is it the mowing height? Do off-type grasses affect the dispersion? Is it something else? This is all part of his research about bermudagrass off-types. For an overview of this problem, see Reasor et al. on the genetic and phenotypic variability of interspecific hybrid bermudagrasses (Cynodon dactylon (L.) Pers. × C. transvaalensis Burtt-Davy) used on golf course putting greens.

As we traveled around central Thailand, we got to see all the major species used as turfgrass in this region. For more about that, see What grasses are growing on golf courses in Thailand? Here's a few notes about what we saw in July.

Seashore paspalum must be maintained with a relatively rapid growth rate in this climate. If paspalum is not kept growing, it will be overtaken by other grasses. Therefore, a lot of work is required to keep paspalum surfaces in a playable condition, and we saw verticutting on paspalum fairways to manage the organic matter.

There are lots of birds on Thailand golf courses. These are Asian openbill and a little egret.

I haven't identified this bird yet.

Bermuda greens and seashore paspalum fairways are pretty common around Bangkok.

Manilagrass (Zoysia matrella) is even more common. Let's call it ubiquitous. You can find it at the airport, along the expressways, in lawns, on golf courses, and on football fields and tennis courts.

This is bermuda on greens with the nuwan noi variety of manilagrass on fairways. The fairway would have been planted to bermudagrass, but over time the nuwan noi comes to dominate the sward.

In parks, palace lawns, and temples, one tends to find tropical carpetgrass (Axonopus compressus) under the trees and nuwan noi manilagrass in full sun. For more about the grasses on lawns, see this post about climate and this one about botanizing in Bangkok.

We were lucky with the weather for that time of year. With 22 golf courses visited, we got rained out zero times. Normal weather in July at Bangkok will have 155 mm of rain and 13 rainy days.

Hey @UTTurfWeeds, squeezing some data entry in isn't so bad after all pic.twitter.com/gD8pcD9Qr5

— Eric Reasor (@TurfBlade) July 15, 2016

We saw a bit of rain, but not enough to interfere with our work.

It was plenty warm. These are temperatures and heat indices at the time I collected data at 19 of the courses. It was only less than 30°C twice. What a great place for a tropical holiday! Or in this case, for 5 days of intensive data collection.

I gave a seminar in July in which I discussed how much one can expect grass to grow.

I said something like "grass can always grow more, but turfgrass managers restrict the growth rate by supplying less nitrogen fertilizer than the grass can use. For example, I could apply 100 g/m² of 10-10-10, and the grass would grow more rapidly than if I applied only 10 g/m²."

Someone in the audience disagreed with me. "You can't apply 100 g/m² of 10-10-10," he said. "That much will burn the grass."

I wondered about that, so I went shopping for 10-10-10. I didn't find a 10-10-10 with suitable particle size. The closest analysis with a particle size suitable for application to turfgrass was 14-14-14. I bought a bag.

Then I marked out plots on a korai (Zoysia matrella) nursery. Each plot was 1 m by 1 m, and there were seven plots in total.

This is what the plots looked like right after the fertilizer application, before turning on the irrigation, on 31 July 2016.

I had measured out the 14-14-14 fertilizer and applied it to these plots. One plot received no fertilizer, and the other plots had 14-14-14 applied at rates from 2.5 up to 15 g N/m² in 2.5 g increments (that's an N rate of 0 to 3 lbs N/1000 ft² in 0.5 pound increments).

This is what the plot receiving the 15 g N/m² rate looked like after I spread the fertilizer and before irrigation was applied.

I wanted to check three things with these fertilizer treatments.

First, I wanted to see if this much fast release fertilizer would burn the grass. In the seminar, I'd said that 100 g/m² of 10-10-10 could be applied, but no one would do that, because it would make the grass grow too fast. In this test with 14-14-14, I included N rates all the way up to 15 g/m², equivalent to 150 g/m² of 10-10-10.

Second, I wondered what would happen with root growth at different rates of fertilizer.

Third, I wondered how long a color or growth response would last. For example, when the grass starts going dormant in the autumn, would the effects of a 31 July fertilizer application still be visible?

Before I applied the fertilizer, the roots were like this. These roots are from the plot receiving the highest rate of 14-14-14, before any fertilizer was applied.

The fertilizer was watered in and there was no burn. Maybe just a little bit where a few particles didn't dissolve completely, but the overall effect was to make the grass greener. A week after the fertilizer application, the plots looked like this. In the foreground is the plot with no 14-14-14 applied, and each plot after that received an increasing 2.5 g N/m² increment of 14-14-14.

This plot received 15 g N/m². A week after the application, it was greener than the surrounding grass that didn't receive fertilizer. If there was any burn, one might pick out a few leaves here. They didn't last long.

 I came back a month later and had a look at the plots on 30 August.

I also looked at the roots for each of the fertilizer treatments. I had expected that adding some 14-14-14 would cause an increase in roots. All the plots showed an increase in roots by 30 August compared to the roots I looked at on 31 July. But I don't see any increase in roots with fertilizer application. If anything, the root system was largest in the control plot that received no fertilizer.

The soil on this nursery is similar to the soil on the course. The nursery soil wasn't tested, but the course soil was, and in May 2016 the median pH was 6.4. Using the Mehlich 3 extractant, the mean K, P, Ca, and Mg were 59, 172, 1304, and 57 ppm.

All these elements were present at adequate amounts in the soil, so adding more K and P in the 14-14-14 didn't make the roots grow more. I had expected more N (up to a point) would cause an increase in root growth, but after one month, that's not apparent at all.

Ryo Ishikawa won the KBC Augusta tournament at Keya GC in Fukuoka this week. Before the tournament started, he was so struck by the green conditions that he wrote about it on his website.

During the tournament, he putted well, with 27 putts Thursday, 26 Friday, 24 Saturday, and 26 Sunday. He had no three putts and 41 one putts on these korai greens during the tournament.

The greenkeeping staff at Keya GC measure the volume of clippings from 12 greens when the greens are mown. I shared some photos of this process, and some of the results during the tournament this year, in these tweets. Measuring #ClipVol at KBC Augusta

I wondered how the clipping volume at Keya GC during the tournament this year compared to other courses. I also wondered if the variation in clipping volume from green to green during the tournament was different from clipping volume variability during a regular week.

To do that, I looked at clipping volume from 7 consecutive days in which greens were mown. Data from Keya during tournament week in 2016 are in the chart below, along with data from the last 7 mowing days at Keya during July 2016, and data from earlier this year from two different courses with cool-season grass.

As far as consistency in the volume of clippings, the tournament data looks impressive. I would expect that this consistency in clipping volume would result in more consistent ball roll on the greens during a tournament compared to everyday play.

I wanted to look also at the variability in clipping volume from green to green on a particular day. Is the variability in clipping volume from green to green lower during the tournament maintenance? To do that, I calculated the coefficient of variation (c_v) for these same data. The c_v is the standard deviation (σ) divided by the mean (μ).

I like that the c_v during the tournament week was on a downward trend. I don't see a huge difference in the overall c_v -- the mean c_v for these dates is 0.31 for C3 grass #1, 0.37 for C3 grass #2, 0.32 for Keya at KBC Augusta 2016, and 0.32 for Keya during the last 7 mows of July.

One might speculate that greens with the same growing environment and the same soil and the same grass would have a lower c_v. The c_v shown here may represent some indication of the microclimate effect on growth across a property.