If you play golf in late fall or early spring, you may ask yourself, "why do the greens have patchy-purple look to them?" The reason is cold weather! Our greens are Penn A4 creeping bentgrass. Penn A4 was an off-type or mutation of the original Penncross Creeping bentgrass developed at Penn State University in the 1950's. Now Penncross, was a cross between 3 different varieties of Creeping Bentgrass. One of the three was PennLu bentgrass. PennLu turns purple in temperatures below 30 degrees or so. So what you are seeing on our greens is the original parent material segregating out! Is it bad...NO. However, as greens age (ours are about 13 years old) the segregations continually get worse and more dramatic. The good news is that during warm weather, it all blends together again!
