slime mold

Turf Team Times brings together the OSU Turfgrass Team to share timely updates about what's happening in sports and lawn turf!

This week, we saw stormy days up North creating some wet and humid conditions for our lawns. Weather conditions have led to some delays in certain insects and disease appearances. Todd Hicks talks about Poa trivialis or roughstalk bluegrass, an invasive species that usually goes dormant and looks dead in July/August. It has been delayed and is just now starting to brown out and may alarm homeowners. Management includes killing it with an herbicide...

Check out the latest edition of the OSU Turfgrass Team Times (TTT).

Last week, Pat Migliozzi (State Service Forester [extraordinaire], Ohio Department of Natural Resources) and I looked at an oak tree showing a most unusual symptom. The base of the tree looked like it had been dipped in white paint.

Slime molds can be found on all types of turfgrasses – from cultivars chosen for lawns to weedy grasses that pop up in places were regular maintenance just isn’t regular. Slime molds are usually more noticeable following extended periods of leaf wetness. With recent rains experienced in NW Ohio, people have been asking "what is going on in my lawn?"

  While walking about the other day I came upon a scene of serial sliming. A slime mold, probably a species of Mucilaga, was colonizing mulch under a maple tree. It was also colonizing a fallen maple leaf. It was also colonizing turfgrass plants next to the mulched area. This cohort of the colonized should tell us something: this slime mold is not very particular. It is not a parasite of this maple leaf or the turfgrass, but is just feeding on microbes in the decayed organic matter.  So no harm, no foul, relative to the need for controls. Just rake it or wash it off if it offends...