Also check out Texas Agricultural Extension Service s Plant Answers Site . This resulted in golf principally played on the seaside links regions of Scotland. It wasn t until the early 1800s that irritants were used to force the earthworms to the surface where they were raked into piles and moved elsewhere. Endophyte is a fungus that lives inside infected grass plants. Some grass varieties grown for turf seed have high levels of endophyte.
Toxins produced by the fungus are harmful to insects feeding on the surface areas of the leaves.
This natural insecticide is both non-appealing and sometimes fatal to the insects, thereby reducing the need for chemical insecticides. Affected insects include chinch bugs, sod webworms and billbugs, but not sub-surface insects such as Japanese beetle grubs. Endophyte-enhanced varieties also have increased growth and vigor, making the varieties better tolerable of drought stress, summer weed invasion, and other possible turf diseases. The advantages of endophyte are most obvious during the late summer and fall months. Endophyte is transmitted only by seed, and its entire life cycle takes place inside plant tissues.