The Rural Voice, 2003-04, Page 12'Our experience
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8 THE RURAL VOICE
Robert Mercer
Grass, from the bottom up
plant is in the vegetative or non-
flowering phase.
So I then went to Oregon State
University on the internes, to a page
on grass growth and regrowth, to find
that there must be cell division and
expansion in certain meristem
systems.
As well ap the "apical meristem"
there is also the intercalary meristem,
located where the leaf blade joins the
sheath. This accounts for the increase
in length of leaves and sheaths. There
are also shoots and tillers and then
the basal bud. This bud comes into
action when the "mother" shoot is
destroyed.
The real emphasis by Dr. Fransen
was suggesting an adjustment to
management skills. He said look at
the roots of the grass plants rather
than watching the topside for
emergence of the spring green grass.
Dr. Fransen caught the attention of
the conference by bringing into the
lecture wet, dripping, slightly muddy
grass samples to show and hand
round to participants. He wanted
farmers to realize that in order to
make more production you had to
encourage the development of the
meristems. This gives you more
"stems" from which you can increase
the tillering — because without more
meristems you had less chance of
increasing yields.
Soil sampling and the resulting
fertilizer applications had to be made
earlier in the year than previously
advised if multiplication of the
meristems was the goal through
better soil nutrition.
His next vital management detail
was not to cut or graze too short and
to leave ample stubble in the fall for
grasses. It's that lower three to four
inches of plant, he said, that holds the
starches for winter protection and
early season growth.
Meristems: invisible to the eye,
but essential to good grass forage
production. Did you know what they
were?0
Robert
Mercer was
editor of the
Broadwater
Market Letter
and
commentator
for 25 years.
It's quite a while since I attended a
crop science lecture at the OAC, and
that was when it was still a college of
the University of Toronto. So, it was
just like old times when Dr. Steve
Fransen, a forage specialist from the
University of Washington State,
started talking about something I had
no knowledge about.
His subject, at a local forage
seminar, was cool -season forage
production. He was directing
producers' attention to optimum
production based on observing root
growth, not forage growth. He
introduced the term "meristem". I
didn't major in crop science so I had
to go to the dictionary and then the
internet to find out just what this was,
and meant. It seems I missed a vital
starting point in my education of the
management skills to better cool -
season grass forage production.
What the dictionary told me was
that meristem referred to the
undifferenticated plant tissue cells in
a state of active division and growth.
(These are best seen under the
microscope in the root mass.)
North Dakota State University told
me, via the internet, that plants such
as trees and shrubs grow with the
youngest cells at the tips. Grass
plants have the oldest cells at the tips.
Thus grazing does not stop growth. I
sort of knew that.
NDSU then went on to say that
leaves continue to grow from the
buds and form new leaf buds in the
shoot's "apical meristem" or growing
point. This meristem remains close to
the ground or under it but below the
reach of the grazing animal when the