Until a few years ago, the preferred cool-season turf-grass variety in Washington was Kentucky bluegrass. Its fine blades and deep green-blue color made it handsome and desirable, but it suffered in the heat and humidity of the mid-Atlantic and required a high level of maintenance and chemicals to remain attractive.

It has been replaced, for the most part, by varieties of turf-type tall fescue -- not as attractive, but far tougher against fungus diseases and other maladies.

For all its problems, bluegrass had one advantage over fescue: It spread by runners, meaning that well-maintained lawns would fix bare spots by themselves. Fescues clump: You have to reseed bare spots or lay sod to bolster thinning turf.

Now an Oregon-based grass seed company, Barenbrug USA, says it has developed a fescue that spreads. Hybridizers developed the strain over the past 10 years by drawing out a recessive character in fescues to want to develop runners, called rhizomes. It is not a genetically modified plant.

The company, whose parent corporation is based in the Netherlands, has trademarked the strain as Rhizomatous Tall Fescue. The first variety, named Labarinth, is available at a number of retailers this fall, including the Home Depot, Kmart, Ace Hardware and Tru-Serve, according to Marc Cool, company vice president.

He described the variety as fine bladed and developed to withstand the heat and drought of the Upper South. It is also available as one-third of the seed types in a mix called WaterSaver.

Scott Warnke, a turf-grass scientist at the National Arboretum, said other companies have also developed a rhizomatous tall fescue. He said he has not seen Labarinth in action, "but the idea is a good one. It may not be as aggressive as Kentucky bluegrass, but it does a pretty good job" of filling in patches on its own.

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