God has His purposes for creating both living and non-living things. Grasses are the gift of nature which like other things I so much admire and cherish.
Grasses are not just the green stuff outside the house. Grasses are useful to farmers as they fertilize the soil. Grasses are used to smooth football field. For children grasses are ideal specie for playground. Some grasses are medicinal. For example lemon grass is used locally to treat fever.
Grasses make up a major part of the vegetation that covers the earth. No wonder grasses are the most adaptable plant groups on the earth, growing in polar regions and deserts, in tropical rain forests, and on wind-swept mountain slopes. Entire vegetation areas are dominated by grasses.
Unlike many other plants, grasses grow above the nodes. New shoots might start from stems growing horizontally on or under the ground. So when the lawn mower or the cow cuts away the tip, or fire rages through a field, grasses keep growing, whereas many other plants stop.
It is interesting to mention that most grasses are not affected if the stems bend over by the wind or trodden underfoot, for they can stand erected and start to grow again, even faster on the sides facing the ground. For these reasons, grasses usually recover quickly even if they suffer damages, so they have an edge over other plants in the fight for sunlight.
Grasses are not only the most abundant plants, but they are the most important flowering-plant family on earth. A botanist once described grass as the foundation of our food. It is “like a dam protecting mankind from famine”.
We get food such as rice, maize, millet, oats, sorghum, guinea corn just to mention few from crops of which we may not be wrong to classify as grasses.
Grasses do not only give us food, but some of them are used as materials to build houses – the good example worth mentioning here are walls made of clay and straw. Also roofs are thatched with grasses during ancient time and even in many rural areas in many countries all over the world in this contemporary world. One of the advantages of such roofs is that they keep the interior of the buildings cool regardless of the external temperature.
Grasses cover and adorn mush of the earth. Apart from the beautiful and relaxing sight of a green meadow or a well-kept lawn, grasses are a major oxygen supplier, because of the sheer mass of the green vegetation that they produce.
The roots of grasses protect the soil and prevent natural phenomenon such as erosion and devastating flood. Keeping its versatility in mind, we are not surprised to learn that the usefulness of grasses has a long history.
The next time you see a waving cornfield, a lush green meadow, or just humble blades of grass growing between stones in a sidewalk, you are advised to stop and think of this marvelous and most versatile plant family, then pause and thank the Creator who has put them in place for our use and pleasure.
Aminat Adesope is one of our staff writers.
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