{"id":3784,"date":"2026-09-23T15:56:44","date_gmt":"2026-09-23T15:56:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/keyapa.com\/sp\/?p=3784"},"modified":"2026-09-23T16:37:51","modified_gmt":"2026-09-23T16:37:51","slug":"yes-mom-rice-corn-and-wheat-are-grasses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/keyapa.com\/sp\/2026\/09\/23\/yes-mom-rice-corn-and-wheat-are-grasses\/","title":{"rendered":"Yes Mom, rice, corn and wheat are grasses!"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I had an entertaining phone call with my mother last week.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We had been talking about allergies, which she had, and she had mentioned she knew pollen from trees may have caused it. But she also noted that grass might have caused it, although she wasn’t sure which part of the plant could be causing the problem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I told her that grasses were the same as trees, and that pollen from their flowers caused it. This caused a lot of surprise where she said she didn’t know grasses had flowers. I replied that they did and sent her pics of my ornamental grass Muhlenbergia capillaris<\/em> flowering.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Muhlenbergia
Muhlenbergia capillaris<\/em> flowering. Yes, they do have flowers!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The fact that there were such things as “ornamental grasses” was another revelation to her, and after that surprise, I just had to tell her that rice (Oryza sativa<\/em>)was a grass, and so was wheat (Triticum aestivum<\/em>) , and corn (Zea mays<\/em>)! This elicited another round of amazed exclamations, and questions about how they were related to the turf grasses that she associated with the term “grass”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Oryza
Oryza sativa<\/em> (rice) spikelets.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I chose to focus on the overall habit of grasses, although I did mention all these plants evolved from a common ancestor millions of years ago. I explained that if you miniaturized rice plants to the height of turf grasses, and then mowed it periodically, they would look remarkably like a common lawn. In the same way, if you allowed turf grass to grow larger and flower, they would resemble the larger rice, wheat, and corn plants that we associate with our life-giving grains.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A
A “lawn” of Oryza sativa<\/em> (rice). Software generated.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Beyond the amusement about her exclamations of surprise, such lack of knowledge about the Poaceae is of course understandable. I believe before 2010 I myself never associated all these seemingly disparate species into one big related family, so I am quite patient when it comes to spreading the word about how the lawns that grace our homes are closely tied to the grains that power our world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Zea
Zea mays<\/em> (corn) is a grass!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I had an entertaining phone call with my mother last week. We had been talking about allergies, which she had, and she had mentioned she knew pollen from trees may have caused it. But she also noted that grass might have caused it, although she wasn’t sure which part of the plant could be causing…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1710,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_siteseo_robots_primary_cat":"none","footnotes":""},"categories":[24,10],"tags":[11,17,100,57],"class_list":["post-3784","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-culture-and-arts","category-personal","tag-muhlenbergia","tag-oryza","tag-triticum","tag-zea"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/keyapa.com\/sp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3784","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/keyapa.com\/sp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/keyapa.com\/sp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"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=3784"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/keyapa.com\/sp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3784\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3804,"href":"https:\/\/keyapa.com\/sp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3784\/revisions\/3804"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/keyapa.com\/sp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1710"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/keyapa.com\/sp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3784"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/keyapa.com\/sp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3784"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/keyapa.com\/sp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3784"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}