FLoraTeXTM Bermudagrass

FLoraTeXTM bermudagrass is a joint release of the Florida and Texas Agricultural Experiment Stations.
FLoraTeXTM is a low maintenance bermudagrass for cemeteries, golf course fairways and roughs, lawns,
parks, and sports turfs in warm-humid and warm-semiarid climatic regions of the United States. Its merits
and limitations are summarized as follows:

Merits

* Widely adapted throughout the warm-humid and warm-semiarid regions of the southern United States
 especially under low maintenance inputs.
* Widely adapted to soil pH especially on alkaline soils.
* Very low nitrogen requirement due to superior nitrogen stress tolerance.
* Excellent drought resistance and dehydration avoidance.
* Superior rooting depth and mass.
* Excellent fall low temperature color retention.
* Very early spring greenup.
* Good wear tolerance.
* Resistant to bermudagrass stunt mite.
* Tolerant to the short-winged mole cricket.
* Tolerant to lance and spiral nematodes.
* Least affected by dollar spot under low nitrogen stress.
* Can be identified by its starch gel electrophoresis banding pattern for aconitase.

Limitations

* Produces seedheads in late Spring.
* May produce viable seed which may contaminate turf with off-types.
* Must be vegetatively propagated by plugs, sod, or sprigs.
* Susceptible to sting nematode.
* Poor shade adaptation which is a characteristic of all bermudagrass cultivars.


Cover Photo by T.E. Freeman