Centipedegrass Provides Food For Our Pollinators

Centipedegrass is a popular lawn grass in the southeastern U.S., mainly due to its excellent heat tolerance and low maintenance requirements. As an added benefit, researchers at ARS’s Crop Genetics and Breeding Research Unit in Tifton, GA, in collaboration with the University of Georgia, discovered that bees and hoverflies were collecting pollen from centipedegrass flower heads. This is important because pollinator populations – which pollinate up to 90% of the world’s food crops – have been in decline worldwide for several decades. Turfgrass lawns are frequently cited as contributing to this decline. From this discovery, homeowners and landscape managers are recommended to stop or reduce insecticide use to maintain essential pollinator populations, as certain insecticides are toxic to foraging bees in lawns.