Sejarah Poaceae (Volume 2)

The Story of Grasses – Grasslands and Grassy Open Ecosystems

  • An Unlucky Parking Lot, Clonal Lineages, and Self-Incompatibility in Imperata cylindrica (Cogongrass)

    An Unlucky Parking Lot, Clonal Lineages, and Self-Incompatibility in Imperata cylindrica (Cogongrass)

    Three years ago, I chronicled the invasion of an island in a parking lot by Imperata cylindrica (cogon grass), and how the property owners removed all vegetation from the affected island a few months later. This included two trees that probably were affected by whatever herbicide they used. Throughout the years, the island had remained…

  • Growing Ornamental Grasses from Seed

    Growing Ornamental Grasses from Seed

    Surprisingly, although I’ve grown rice from seed all the way to harvesting, I’ve actually never grown ornamental grasses from seed. So this year I decided I’d try my luck at it. On the face of it, it seems to make sense to grow grasses from seed, given that you can easily buy hundreds (or even…

  • How Bamboos Exploited Pandas

    How Bamboos Exploited Pandas

    Pandas are iconic animals that are well known and beloved around the world. They are bears from the family Ursidae, and are endemic to China. But unlike the other members of the taxon, they subsist mainly on bamboo shoots and leaves, even though their teeth and digestive systems are geared towards a meat-eating (carnivorous) diet.…

  • Delineating Grassland Evolution Using Phytoliths

    Delineating Grassland Evolution Using Phytoliths

    I have a strong fascination with the evolution of grasslands, and this recent talk by Dr. Caroline A E Strömberg is pretty much the best and most comprehensive video about that subject. If you are at all a scholar of grasses, then this is one video you should not miss. It is fairly long, but…

  • Muhly Mania at Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center

    Muhly Mania at Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center

    There were two places at Austin, TX that I wanted to visit. One was the Half Pint Prairie at the University of Texas at Austin’s campus (a student project from the Covid years that turned a small plot smack-dab in the middle of the city into a mini prairie), and the other was UT Austin’s…

  • eDNA and Mammoth Steppes: Let’s Hear It for the Forbs!

    eDNA and Mammoth Steppes: Let’s Hear It for the Forbs!

    Forbs is a catch-all term for all herbaceous plants in grasslands that are not graminoids. That is, these are the species that are not in the plant families Poaceae, Cyperaceae, and Juncaceae. The focus of this website is obviously on the graminoid family Poaceae, and grasses rightly have been the main focus of studies on…