Grasses may be delicate and feathery as the finest lace, and also strong and hard enough to crack a buffalo’s skull. (Source: Thinkstock Images)
The grasses really must be singing. For though we may stomp on them, burn them and repeatedly run vicious mowers over them, they know they have us — the great human race and most of the animal kingdom — by the short and curlies. We may fell rainforests, and wantonly destroy beautiful natural places, and muck up the oceans, but grasslands know they cannot be touched.
Especially if they belong to the big three: the major-domo families of rice, wheat or maize which, between them, provide us with more than half the calories we need every day. Along with other members of their great clan, they also provide nearly all the food that we feed our domestic livestock. Wild herbivores, elephants included, would also not survive without them. And if they go, what will be left for the ferocious carnivores to hunt? Even these guys occasionally eat grass — to clean out their stomachs.
But these “big three” are like massive multinational monopolies that govern the entire planet. Without these grasses we would be dead. Just think of it: from the seeds of these and some other grasses come your cornflakes and phulkas, rice and ragi muddes (ugh!), breads by the hundreds, pizzas, cakes and pastries, popcorn and puffed rice, naan and rumali rotis. Not to mention (even though these words will soon be beeped out), rum, vodka, beer and single malts! And then there’s sugarcane — also a grass, and where would we be without that?
Grasses form the fifth largest plant family on earth but have around 10,000-12,000 species spread all over the world. Every continent has its own major grassland: the pampas in South America, the steppes of Russia and Mongolia, the American prairies, the savannahs of Africa (so famous for its wildebeest migrations) and our own shrinking ones where the blackbuck and bustards still race and the floricans jump. Excluding Greenland and Antarctica, grasslands cover over 40 per cent of the earth’s landmass. By far, it is the most influential and useful plant family as far as we are concerned.
Grasses may be delicate and feathery as the finest lace, and also strong and hard enough to crack a buffalo’s skull — which is why our cops are so fond of swinging their bamboo lathis on our heads at the slightest pretext. Apart from providing food, grass has been used for everything from constructing scaffolding (bamboo) to basket-making, producing paper and insulation material, as fuel, timber and roof thatching.
Tramping about in a forest with a dense canopy can become claustrophobic after a bit, and there’s nothing like stepping out at the edge of the forest into the wide open spaces of a grassland; instinctively, you breathe deeply and your mood lifts. Also, you are likely to spot wildlife more easily here as the animals drift and graze contentedly, watched, no doubt, by a perfectly camouflaged tiger, crouched low somewhere. Fields of grass, green or gold, swaying and blowing in the wind like waves in the ocean, can lift your spirits and turn you dreamy-eyed and poetic like nothing else can. But those breezes are hugely important to the grasses, because grasses are wind-pollinated. That apart, manicured green lawns in our urban habitats — our parks and gardens — are a soothing draw, as is alas, that most sterilised and “neutered” grassland of all: the golf course!
With so much unwelcome attention (who likes being chomped up by herds of voracious bovines or driven over by a lawnmower?), how do grasses defend themselves? How have they survived? As we have seen, some have made themselves indispensable to us, but as many as 66 million years ago, when they first apparently appeared, they had already discovered that silica was a good deterrent against voracious appetites. Traces of silica have been found in fossilised dinosaur dung dating from that period. And that’s what glass is made from. Even today, the blades of many grasses are spiked with silica (you can actually see it glittering at the edges of a blade), in the manner we stick bits of broken glass on top of a wall. You can draw blood if you walk through a field of “sword-grass”, or, even if you carelessly run your finger down a blade of silica-armed grass. Eating the glass in grass would, I imagine, irritate the stomach lining considerably (which ironically may be exactly why your dog eats grass when it wants to deliberately be sick to get rid of the muck it’s eaten).
But that’s not all. Grasses, which are monocots, make a mickey of their predators by growing in a bottoms-up manner. While in most plants — the dicots — the leaves at the top expand and grow outwards; with grasses, the leaves grow from buds (called apical buds) at the bottom of the stems. The newest leaves in an onion plant, for example, may be white and actually under the ground! The topmost parts of the leaf blades are the oldest. Grazing and mowing or, for that matter, even burning, actually helps the plant —by getting rid of the old stuff on top! Rarely does the grazing animal get really down and dirty, and kill the plant by ripping it up by the roots. Further, each leaf has a sheath which surrounds the stem, with the smooth-edged blade growing out of it. A fringe of hairs at the junction of the sheath and leaf blade keeps water as well as unwelcome insects out. The stems are usually hollow, but solid at the nodes where the leaves are attached.
There’s one final accolade that we must give to the grasses. Through the ages, they have shown us that, even in their husky and most desiccated form, they can give us enormous happiness and pleasure: Anyone who has enjoyed a roll in the hay can vouch for that!
Ranjit Lal is an author, environmentalist and bird watcher.
