{"id":27,"date":"2024-05-05T18:32:42","date_gmt":"2024-05-05T18:32:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/keyapa.com\/sp\/?page_id=27"},"modified":"2026-03-12T12:17:29","modified_gmt":"2026-03-12T12:17:29","slug":"why-grasses","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/keyapa.com\/sp\/why-grasses\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Grasses?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"818\" src=\"https:\/\/keyapa.com\/sp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/250222917-1024x818.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-30\" srcset=\"https:\/\/keyapa.com\/sp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/250222917-1024x818.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/keyapa.com\/sp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/250222917-300x240.jpg 300w, https:\/\/keyapa.com\/sp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/250222917-768x614.jpg 768w, https:\/\/keyapa.com\/sp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/250222917.jpg 1200w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\"><em>Image courtesy of&nbsp;Jill Knutson Haukos<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>I am fascinated by grasses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Most people associate the term &#8220;grass&#8221; with the lawns that dot the artificial suburban and urban landscape, but the grass family (Poaceae) actually is composed of a lot more species than that. Personally, my very life is interwoven with one of the world&#8217;s most important grasses, rice.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Not only are grasses the most important plant family to mankind, but by many measures grasses are the world&#8217;s most successful plant family (Linder et al. 2017).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Some notable facts about grasses:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><strong>Economically, grasses are by far the most important plant family<\/strong>. For example, 60% of human energy intake is derived from just three cereal species (rice, wheat, maize\/corn; FAO, 1995). Most forage for domestic animals and most of the world&#8217;s sugar (from Sugar Cane or&nbsp;<em>Saccharum officinarum<\/em>) are also derived from grasses. Grasses like bamboos&nbsp; are heavily used in construction and their use is increasing by leaps and bounds. Finally, the use of fast growing grasses such as species of&nbsp;<em>Miscanthus<\/em>,&nbsp;<em>Arundo<\/em>,&nbsp;<em>Phalaris<\/em>&nbsp;and others as biomass for energy production is growing.<br><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Civilization as we know it today, would not have developed<\/strong>&nbsp;without the domestication of rice, wheat, corn\/maize, and other agriculturally important grass species.<br><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Grasses were intimately involved in the evolution of humanity.&nbsp;<\/strong>The spread of grasslands created the environment where our most essential human traits developed &#8211;&nbsp; flexible diets, large brains, complex social structures and the ability to walk and run on two legs (Uno et al, 2016; Polissar et al, 2019). Without the grasses, our species might not have evolved and developed intelligence.<br> <\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Grasses have had profound effects on how we look and on the types of societies that we live in.<\/strong> For example, <a href=\"https:\/\/keyapa.com\/sp\/2025\/10\/26\/how-grasses-directed-and-shaped-human-evolution\/\">our skulls owe their basic shape to grasses<\/a>, and the <a href=\"https:\/\/keyapa.com\/sp\/2026\/03\/12\/how-grasses-helped-create-traditional-gender-roles-in-human-societies\/\">strict gender roles that are a hallmark of most cultures today are due mainly to grasses<\/a>. More about this <a href=\"https:\/\/keyapa.com\/sp\/how-grasses-have-changed-and-molded-us\/\">here<\/a>.<br><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Ecologically, grasses are by far the most dominant plant family.&nbsp;<\/strong>Areas dominated by grasses cover up to 43% of the surface of the world&nbsp;(Gibson, 2009), and they are found in almost every ecological habitat, including Antarctica.&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/poasession.blogspot.com\/2020\/08\/an-empire-of-grass.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Up to 37% of the land area of the USA<\/a>&nbsp;is dominated by grasses!&nbsp;<strong>Entire ecosystems of animals and other plants depend on grasses for their continued health and existence.<\/strong><br><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Although grasses account for only 3% of plant species on Earth, grass-dominated landscapes contribute 33% of global primary productivity<\/strong>, the amount of CO2 removed from the atmosphere every year to fuel photosynthesis (Beer et al., 2010)<br><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/poasession.blogspot.com\/2021\/12\/ancient-old-growth-grasslands-may-be.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Grasslands are a more reliable carbon sink than forests<\/a><\/strong>&nbsp;under certain conditions (Dass et al, 2018).<br><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Grasses are the&nbsp;<strong>fifth most species-rich angiosperm family<\/strong>&nbsp;with about 12,000 species (Clayton et al., 2015)<br><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/poasession.blogspot.com\/2021\/10\/what-is-most-bio-diverse-place-on.html\">Grasslands have higher plant diversity than even rainforests at the smaller scales.<\/a>&nbsp;<\/strong>A mountain grassland in Argentina had an amazing 89 vascular plant species in a 1 meter square plot! (Wilson et al, 2012)<br><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>The Poaceae&nbsp;<strong><a href=\"https:\/\/poasession.blogspot.com\/2021\/12\/first-report-of-grass-with-cam.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">exhibits all 3 different types of photosynthesis&nbsp;<\/a>(C3, C4, and CAM),&nbsp;<\/strong>an attribute it shares with&nbsp;only 8 other plant families.<br><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Grasses have the ability to survive in the widest range of temperatures among plants<\/strong>, with&nbsp;<em>Deschampsia antartica<\/em>&nbsp;able to live down to -10 degrees C (with an optimum of 10 degrees), and&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/poasession.blogspot.com\/2020\/12\/how-one-badass-grass-thrives-at-thermal.html\"><em>Dichanthelium thermale<\/em>&nbsp;able to tolerate up to 65 degrees C in the active geothermal areas of Yellowstone National Park.<\/a><br><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Grasses are often the first to colonize new land<\/strong>. For example, the dune grass&nbsp;<em>Leymus arenarius<\/em>&nbsp;was one of only 4 plants to appear during the first decade after the formation of the volcanic island of&nbsp;Surtsey in 1963 (Magnusson et al, 2014).<br><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Grasses are one of the few plant families that have members which can fix nitrogen via specialized structures housing nitrogen-fixing bacteria<\/strong><br><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>In addition to being the major component of lawns throughout the world, ornamental grasses are becoming very popular in landscape plantings and gardens.<\/strong>&nbsp;They contribute movement to a static scenery, and are easy to grow and pest resistant. There are more and more cultivars of popular native ornamental grasses such as&nbsp;<em>Muhlenbergia capillaris<\/em>,&nbsp;<em>Panicum virgatum<\/em>,&nbsp;<em>Andropogon gerardii<\/em>, and&nbsp;<em>Schizachyrium scoparium<\/em>.<br><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Grasslands can be used to <a href=\"https:\/\/keyapa.com\/sp\/2024\/10\/23\/grasslands-accurately-track-climate-change-effects-instantaneously-in-real-time\/\">track climate change in real time<\/a><\/strong>, unlike forests.<br><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>The Poaceae is&nbsp;<strong>the only plant family that has an entire biome named after it<\/strong>&nbsp;&#8211; Grasslands.<br><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Grasses are&nbsp;coolly difficult.<\/strong> It takes a special kind of masochist to want to try to learn to ID them \ud83d\ude09<br><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>REFERENCES<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Beer, C., Reichstein, M., Tomelleri, E., Ciais, P., Jung, M., Carvalhais, N., Rodenbeck, C., Arain, M. A., Baldocchi, D., Bonan, G. B., Bondeau, A., Cescatti, A., Lasslop, G., Lindroth, A., Lomas, M., Luyssaert, S., Margolis, H., Oleson, K. W., Roupsard, O., Veenendaal, E., Viovy, N., Williams, C., Woodward, F. I. &amp; Papale, D. (2010). Terrestrial gross carbon dioxide uptake: global distribution and covariation with climate. Science 329,<br>834\u2013838<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Clayton, W. D., Vorontsova, M. S., Harman, K. T. &amp; Williamson, H. (2015). GrassBase \u2013 The Online World Grass Flora. Royal Botanic Gardens Kew, Kew.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Pawlok Dass, Benjamin Z Houlton, Yingping Wang, David Warlind. Grasslands may be more reliable carbon sinks than forests in California. Environmental Research Letters, 2018; 13 (7): 074027 DOI: 10.1088\/1748-9326\/aacb39<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Gibson, D. J. (2009). Grasses and Grassland Ecology. Oxford University Press, Oxford.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Linder, H Peter; Lehmann, Caroline E R; Archibald, Sally; Osborne, Colin P; Richardson, David M (2018). Global grass (Poaceae) success underpinned by traits facilitating colonization, persistence and habitat transformation. Biological Reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society, 93(2):1125-1144.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Magnusson, Borgthor &amp; Magn\u00fasson, Sigur\u00f0ur &amp; \u00d3lafsson, Erling &amp; Sigurdsson, Bjarni. (2014). Plant colonization, succession and ecosystem development on Surtsey with reference to neighbouring islands. Biogeosciences. 11. 5521-5537. 10.5194\/bg-11-5521-2014.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Pratigya J. Polissar, Cassaundra Rose, Kevin T. Uno, Samuel R. Phelps &amp; Peter deMenocal (2019). Synchronous rise of African C4 ecosystems 10 million years ago in the absence of aridification. Nature Geosciencevolume 12, pages 657\u2013660<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Kevin T. Uno, Pratigya J. Polissar, Kevin E. Jackson, Peter B. deMenocal. Neogene biomarker record of vegetation change in eastern Africa. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2016; 113 (23): 6355 DOI: 10.1073\/pnas.1521267113<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Wilson, J. Bastow; Peet, Robert K.; Dengler, J\u00fcrgen; P\u00e4rtel, Meelis (1 August 2012). &#8220;Plant species richness: the world records&#8221;. Journal of Vegetation Science. 23 (4): 796\u2013802.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I am fascinated by grasses. Most people associate the term &#8220;grass&#8221; with the lawns that dot the artificial suburban and urban landscape, but the grass family (Poaceae) actually is composed of a lot more species than that. Personally, my very life is interwoven with one of the world&#8217;s most important grasses, rice.&nbsp; Not only are&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_siteseo_robots_primary_cat":"","footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-27","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/keyapa.com\/sp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/27","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/keyapa.com\/sp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/keyapa.com\/sp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/keyapa.com\/sp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/keyapa.com\/sp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/keyapa.com\/sp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/27\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2712,"href":"https:\/\/keyapa.com\/sp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/27\/revisions\/2712"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/keyapa.com\/sp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}