Grasses

I felt kind of guilty to see that the grass had gone to seed on my lawn, but then I saw it ripen in a lot of other places and relaxed, it seems the combination of warmth and plentiful rain gave it the oomph to grow wild this year.

Because we're used to seeing it in its domesticated form - the ubiquitous neatly manicured green carpet - we tend to forget what grass really looks like when left to its own devices. Its largest specimen, the bamboo, can grow over a hundred feet tall.

The broader grass family, the Gramineae, the one that gifted us with the edible grains, covers a third of the dry land on earth and makes up seventy percent of all the agricultural crops.

Grasses are found on every continent, and yes, that does include Antarctica; they are extremely adaptable and will thrive almost anywhere, in forests, wetlands and the perpetually frozen soil of the tundra. Their proliferation is made even more impressive by the fact that they are monocots and each one of their seeds produces a single green blade.

In usefulness, grasses span the gamut from food to construction materials, paper and bio-fuel. They are great oxygen producers and providers of habitat for a broad variety of wildlife, they stabilize the soils and reduce the air temperature.

Of course that doesn't excuse me from having to mow the lawn, the rabbits are running wild in the tall grass and soon they'll be able to hide in it too.