At first glance, it’s only grass, the lush, thick growth that forms a living carpet across our front lawns, playgrounds and golf courses. But as with all else in nature, there is a lot more going on behind the scenes than is evident at first glance. And pulling up a single grass plant provides all the proof you need of what a complex organism it is and of its role in helping to create the perfect lawn.
Contrary to what many people think when they look across a rolling lawn or playing field, they’re not just looking at bunches of grass blades clustered together. What they are seeing are actually millions of grass plants, each growing from an individual root system that, depending upon the species, may run several feet beneath the soil. Classified as a monocot, which is a plant that emerges as a single leaf as opposed to two leaves like other plants do, grass is part of a family whose members number in the thousands and that are related to at least one other species ”“ which comes as a complete surprise to many people.
Corn, the ubiquitous grain that shows up regularly on Thanksgiving tables, in muffins, in movie theaters and at barbecues, is a grass, and a close look at a single turf grass plant reveals the striking similarities between the two. Left to their own devices and never mowed, all lawn grasses eventually grow, like corn, to several feet or more, with their leaves overlapping characteristically around a central stalk. All grasses flower and produce grain or seeds, and the corn we know today is actually a highly developed cultivar that is the result of years of crossbreeding that began more than 200 years ago with an obscure plant whose grain was vastly different from the sweet corn we buy at farmers markets and vegetable stands during the summer. And without sugar cane, another grass cousin, many of the foods we eat would not be nearly as enjoyable.
Most lawn grass is composed of a fibrous root system, a single stalk and leaves that grow from the base. If grass is allowed to grow, new leaves, or blades, emerge from nodes all along the main stalk, but this rarely happens on lawns where it is kept to a manageable height by mowing. Lawns fail for many reasons, not the least of which often has to do with improper mowing. Grass plants grow in direct proportion to how stressed their roots are, and if deprived of sunlight due to a low mowing height, it can take months for a single plant to recover. This is why lawn specialists suggest cutting off no more than one-third of the height of a lawn, as this creates the least amount of stress to the roots, allowing the plants to regrow quickly.
Other grasses with which we could not survive include sugar cane, wheat and rice. Sugar cane is valued for its sweet stalks, while wheat and rice have been valued as food staples for thousands of years. Not only are these plants closely related, but their relationship goes beyond their biological affiliations to those that involve each plant being used in conjunction with the others to produce many of the products with which we are familiar today. Sugar cane produces the sweetener that improves the flavor of many wheat and rice-based cereals, and on and on it goes. The collaborations between the different species of plants are legion, and much of this information can be obtained simply by a close reading of the ingredient labels on many of the packaged foods we consume.
The cereal or toast we ate this morning are simply variations on a theme, different botanical permutations of what we grow on our lawns or playing fields. They are just one more example of how completely dependent we are on natural forces that do indeed call all the shots at the most basic levels.
— Rachel Lovejoy, a freelance writer living in Lyman, who enjoys exploring the woods of southern Maine, can be reached via email at rachell1950@yahoo.com.
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