On the issue of assessing the thermal resources of the growing season for the cultivation of ornamental cereals and sedges

 Relevance. The great variety and decorativeness of ornamental grasses and sedges have recently attracted the attention of modern landscape designers and gardeners around the world. In biotechnology, miscanthus is used as an alternative to wood, a renewable raw material for the production of bioethanol and cellulose. In the Stavropol Botanical Garden, under conditions of introduction, a collection of ornamental grasses and sedges is studied, including 36 species, 43 varieties and 23 specimens, belonging to both cold and warm season plants. Along with ornamental grasses and sedges of the temperate zone (3–4th zone of winter hardiness), plants from the southern regions (5–6th zone of winter hardiness) have been increasingly attracted recently, however, the temperature factor is limiting for their wide use. The objective of this work is to study a promising range of cold and warm season cereals and sedges for use in landscaping in connection with the thermal resources of our climatic zone.

Methods. To assess the thermal resources of the conditions of the introduction site, the sums of effective temperatures before the beginning of the generative period were calculated. Mathematical processing was carried out according to standard methods.

Results. It is shown that in the cereals of the cold season studied by us the generative phase, on average, begins on the 7–97th day of the growing season, when the sum of effective temperatures reaches 5.5–691 °C. In cereal species of the warm season it occurs on the 101–174th day of the growing season, when the sum of effective temperatures reaches 914–1537 °С. A strong correlation was found between the sum of effective temperatures and the date of the beginning of the generative phase (r = 0.82–0.99). The temperature conditions in our zone allow us to grow a wide and varied range of ornamental grasses and sedges belonging to the genera Festuca, Glyceria, Koeleria, Leymus, Phalaris, Phragmites, Carex Miscanthus, Erianthus, Imperata, Pennisetum, Chasmanthium, Arundo, Panicum. 

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