grass

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For more information on grass, visit Britannica.com.

Idioms beginning with grass:
grass is always greener on the other side, the

See also don't let the grass grow under one's feet; put out to grass; snake in the grass.

Marajuana. See also Mary Jane, Iceplant.

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Flowing green grasses, sweeping meadows, or farms suggest an image of peaceful, pastoral lifestyles. The more common grass of suburban lawns can represent domesticity.

Plant members of the family Poaceae (Gramineae).

• g. chinkerinchee — ornithogalum ornithogaloides.
• g. disease — see grass sickness.
• eating g. — is commonly seen in dogs and cats, sometimes associated with gastrointestinal disease, but more often an innocuous habit. May be a cause or a means of easy vomiting when the stomach is empty.
• elephant g. — see pennisetum purpureum.
• g. founder — laminitis.
• g. nematode — see anguina lolii.
• g. pea — lathyrus sativus.
• g. seed abscess — a common lesion in cattle in summer when grazing dry, native grasses with serrated awns. Lesions occur on the sides of the face and in the parotid area. They are cold abscesses, slow-growing, firm, painless and without heat. They rarely rupture and cause little inconvenience. Their importance is the need to differentiate them from actinomycosis of the jaw.
• g. seed awns — see awn.
• g. seed nematode poisoning — see anguina lolii.
• g. sickness — a dysautonomia of horses; a noninfectious disease of unknown etiology characterized by drooling of saliva from the nostrils, alimentary tract stasis, small hard feces and severe mental depression. The outcome is always fatal. There is a diagnostic degenerative lesion in the sympathetic ganglia.
• g. staggers — see lactation tetany (2).
• g. tetany — see lactation tetany (2).
• g. vetchling — lathyrus nissolia.

• Botany and Plant Parts - grass: member of the family of flowering plants with long, narrow leaves, jointed stems, flowers in spikelets, and seedlike fruit
• Grasses, Sedges, and Grasslike Plants - grass: member of the family of flowering plants with long, narrow leaves, jointed stems, flowers in spikelets, and seedlike fruit
• Ranching and Animal Husbandry - grass: herbaceous vegetation upon which animals graze
• Horse and Dog Racing
• Plants and Plant Parts - grass: member of family of flowering plants with long, narrow leaves, used for food and fodder or as lawns
• Green
• Drug Names and Forms - grass: Slang. marijuana

For other uses, see Grass (disambiguation).

This article includes a list of references, but its sources remain unclear because it has insufficient inline citations. Please help to improve this article by introducing more precise citations. (March 2009)

Wild grass

Cut grass

Zoysia grass flower

Pennisetum setaceum flowers

Houses with turf roofs in Iceland

Grasses, or more technically graminoids, are monocotyledonous, usually herbaceous plants with narrow leaves growing from the base. They include the "true grasses", of the Poaceae (or Gramineae) family, as well as the sedges (Cyperaceae) and the rushes (Juncaceae). The true grasses include cereals, bamboo and the grasses of lawns (turf) and grassland. Sedges include many wild marsh and grassland plants, and some cultivated ones such as water chestnut (Eleocharis dulcis) and papyrus sedge (Cyperus papyrus). Uses for graminoids include food (as grain, sprouted grain, shoots or rhizomes), drink (beer, whisky, vodka), pasture for livestock, thatch, paper, fuel, clothing, insulation, construction, sports turf, basket weaving and many others.

Contents 1 Ecology 2 Agriculture 3 Lawns 3.1 Sports turf 3.1.1 Cricket 3.1.2 Golf 3.1.3 Tennis 3.2 Fiction 4 Gallery 5 Footnotes 6 References 7 External links

Ecology

A kangaroo eating grass

Graminoids are among the most versatile life forms. They became widespread toward the end of the Cretaceous period, and fossilized dinosaur dung (coprolites) have been found containing phytoliths of a variety of grasses that include grasses that are related to modern rice and bamboo.^[1] Grasses have adapted to conditions in lush rain forests, dry deserts, cold mountains and even intertidal habitats, and are now the most widespread plant type; grass is a valuable source of food and energy for all sorts of wildlife and organics.

Graminoids are the dominant vegetation in many habitats, including grassland, salt-marsh, reedswamp and steppes. They also occur as a smaller part of the vegetation in almost every other terrestrial habitat.

There are some 3,500 species of graminoids.^[2]

Many types of animals eat grass as their main source of food, and are called graminivores – these include cattle, sheep, horses, rabbits and many invertebrates, such as grasshoppers and the caterpillars of many brown butterflies. Grasses are also eaten by omnivorous or even occasionally by primarily carnivorous animals.

In the study of ecological communities, herbaceous plants are divided into graminoids and forbs, which are herbaceous dicotyledons, mostly with broad leaves.

Agriculture

Plants of this type have always been important to humans. They have been grown as food for domesticated animals for up to 6,000 years. (See grass fed beef.) They have been used for paper-making since 2400 BC or before. Now they provide the majority of food crops, and have many other uses, such as feeding animals, and for lawns. There are many minor uses, and grasses are familiar to most human cultures.

Grasses used as an ornamental planting

Lawns

In some places, particularly in suburban areas throughout the world, the maintenance of a grass lawn is a sign of a homeowner's responsibility to the overall appearance of their neighborhood. One work credits lawn maintenance to,

“

...the desire for upward mobility and its manifestation in the lawn. As Virginia Jenkins, author of The Lawn, put it quite bluntly, 'Upper middle-class Americans emulated aristocratic society with their own small, semi-rural estates.' In general, the lawn was one of the primary selling points of these new suburban homes, as it shifted social class designations from the equity and ubiquity of urban homes connected to the streets with the upper-middle class designation of a "healthy" green space and the status symbol that is the front lawn.[3][4]

”

Many municipalities and homeowner's associations have rules which require lawns to be maintained to certain specifications, sanctioning those who allow the grass to grow too long. In communities with drought problems, watering of lawns may be restricted to certain times of day or days of the week.^[5]

The smell of the freshly cut grass is produced mainly by cis-3-Hexenal.^[6]

Sports turf

Forms of grass are used to cover baseball fields, like this one in Citi Field, home of the Mets.

See also: Turf management and Sand-based athletic fields

Grass is important in many sports, notably with those played on fields such as American football, Association football, baseball, cricket, and rugby. In some sports facilities, including indoor domes and other places where maintenance of a grass field would be difficult, grass may be replaced with artificial turf, a synthetic grass-like substitute. Sports such as golf, tennis and cricket are particularly dependent on the quality of the grass on which the sport is played.

Cricket

The gray area is the cricket pitch currently in use. Parallel to it are other pitches in various states of preparation which could be used in other matches.

In cricket, the pitch is the strip of carefully mowed and rolled grass where the bowler bowls. In the days leading up to the match it is repeatedly mowed and rolled to produce a very hard, flat surface for the ball to bounce off. The quality of the preparation can have a considerable influence on the game; a relatively grassy pitch will favor bowlers and a hard and dryer pitch, with less grass remaining, will typically favor batsmen (at least initially). As the grass dries out and is damaged over the course of the match the pitch's characteristics will change, resulting in batting on the first day of a test match being vastly different to batting on the same pitch after 7 days of play.

Golf

Golf is very dependent on a quality grass surface. Grass on golf courses is kept in three distinct conditions: that of the rough, the fairway, and the putting green. Grass on the fairway is short and even, allowing the player to cleanly strike the ball. Playing from the rough is a disadvantage because the grass is generally much longer, which may affect the flight of the ball. Grass on the putting green is the shortest and most even, ideally allowing the ball to roll smoothly over the surface. An entire industry revolves around the development and marketing of grasses for golf courses.

Tennis

In tennis, grass is grown on very hard-packed soil, and the bounce of a tennis-ball may vary depending on the grass's health, how recently it has been mowed, and the wear and tear of recent play. The surface is softer than hard courts and clay (other tennis surfaces), so the ball bounces lower, and players must reach the ball faster resulting in a different style of play which may suit some players more than others. The most famous grass tennis court in the world is Centre Court at Wimbledon located in England, home of the Wimbledon Championship. This is considered the most expensive lawn in the world.

Fiction

Grass plays a central role in two important science fiction catastrophe novels from the 1940s and 1950s, Ward Moore's Greener Than You Think, in which the world is slowly taken over by unstoppable Bermuda Grass, and John Christopher's The Death of Grass, in which a plague that kills off all forms of grass threatens the survival of the human species.

Gallery

• 

  A sea of neatly cut grass surrounds the bunkers at Filton Golf Club, Bristol.

• 

  Tall grass growing wild at Lyme Park

• 

  In some places, even small areas of grass are valuable. These steps were built to access grass for animal feed. Swiss-Italian region near Bignasco.

• 

  Grasses play an important role in agriculture.

• 

  Wild grasses in India.

Footnotes

1. ^ Dinosaurs Dined on Grass by Dolores R. Piperno and Hans-Dieter Sues, Science, 18 November 2005: Vol. 310. no. 5751, pp. 1126 - 1128.
2. ^ The Observers Book of Grasses, Sedges and Rushes by Francis Rose, published by Frederick Warne, Revised Edition Nov 1974, page 5, ISBN 0-7232-1533-2
3. ^ Matthew J. Lindstrom, Hugh Bartling, Suburban sprawl: culture, theory, and politics (2003), p. 72, quoting Virginia Scott Jenkins, The Lawn: A History of an American Obsession (1994), p.21.
4. ^ Paul Robbins and Julie T. Sharp, "Producing and Consuming Chemicals: The Moral Economy of the American Lawn", Economic Geography 79:4 (2003), p. 425-45; reprinted in William G. Moseley, David A. Lanegran, Kavita Pandit, The Introductory Reader in Human Geography (2007), p. 323-36.
5. ^ Lawn Sprinkling Regulations in Metro Vancouver, BC, Canada
6. ^ hexenal (School of Chemistry, University of Bristol)

References

• Chapman, G.P. and W.E. Peat. 1992. An Introduction to the Grasses. CAB Internat., Oxon, UK.
• Cheplick, G.P. 1998. Population Biology of Grasses. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
• Milne, L. and M. Milne. 1967. Living Plants of the World. Chaticleer Press, N.Y.
• Soderstrom, T.R., K.W. Hilu, C.S. Campbell, and M.E. Barkworth, eds. 1987. Grass Systematics and Evolution. Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, D.C.
• Went, Frits W. 1963. The Plants. Time-Life Books, N.Y.

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Grass

• Need a Definition of Grass?
• Interactive Key to the Grasses of the Columbia Basin
• Vegetative Key to Grasses

This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)

Dansk (Danish)
n. - græs, marihuana, nellikestiklinger, "stikker"
v. tr. - lægge ud til græs, sætte på græs, nedlægge, midlertidigt afskedige
v. intr. - græsse, sladre om

idioms:

• grass on    græsse på
• grass over    dække med græs
• grass roots    græsrødder
• grass widow    græsenke, fraskilt kvinde
• not let the grass grow under one's feet    ikke lade tiden gå til spilde
• out to grass    ikke arbejde længere
• put out to grass    sætte på græs
• the grass is (always) greener    græsset er altid grønnere

Nederlands (Dutch)
gras, weiland, verklikker, wiet (drugs), bovengrond (mijn), asperges, met gras bedekken, grazen, tegen de grond slaan, verraden (politie), neerschieten (vogel), op het droge brengen (vis)

Français (French)
n. - (Bot) herbe, gazon (de tennis), herbage, pâture, fourrage, herbe (marijuana), (GB) dénonciateur
v. tr. - mettre en herbe (un champ), enherber, gazonner (un jardin), faire paître, mettre en pacage
v. intr. - se recouvrir d'herbe, pâturer, (GB) moucharder, dénoncer (qn)

idioms:

• at grass    au vert
• grass on    (GB) dénoncer (qn)
• grass over    enherber (un champ), gazonner
• grass roots    base (d'une organisation), (Pol) la base (d'un parti), de base, à la base, qui émane de la base
• grass widow    femme dont le mari est temporairement absent, femme divorcée/séparée (de son mari), amante délaissée, mère d'un enfant illégitime
• not let the grass grow under one's feet    ne laisse pas traîner les choses
• out to grass    (lit, fig) mettre au vert
• the grass is always greener    on croit toujours que c'est mieux ailleurs

Deutsch (German)
n. - Gras, Rasen, Weide, (ugs.) Informant, Marihuana
v. - weiden, niederschlagen

idioms:

• at grass    auf der Weide
• grass on    verpfeifen
• grass over    mit Rasen bedecken
• grass roots    Wurzeln
• grass widow    Strohwitwe
• not let the grass grow under one's feet    nicht auf die lange Bank schieben
• out to grass    auf der Weide
• the grass is always greener    Nachbars Kirschen schmecken immer besser

Ελληνική (Greek)
n. - χλόη, χορτάρι, γρασίδι, γκαζόν, χορτονομή, βοσκή, (καθομ.) μαριχουάνα, χαφιές
v. - στρώνω με γρασίδι, (κοιν.) καρφώνω (στην αστυνομία)

idioms:

• grass on    καρφώνω στην αστυνομία
• grass over    καλλιεργώ
• grass roots    λαϊκή βάση (κόμματος), εκλογική πελατεία, ψηφοφόροι, βασικές αρχές
• grass widow    γυναίκα της οποίας ο σύζυγος απουσιάζει
• not let the grass grow under one's feet    (καθομ.) δεν χάνω τον καιρό μου
• out to grass    συνταξιούχος
• put out to grass    βγάζω στη σύνταξη
• the grass is (always) greener    τα ξένα είναι πάντα καλύτερα

Italiano (Italian)
prato, erba, delatore

idioms:

• grass on    denunciare
• grass over    coltivato a prato
• grass roots    persone-base di una organizzazione
• grass widow    vedova bianca
• not let the grass grow under one's feet    non lasciarsi crescer l'erba sotto ai piedi, non perdere tempo
• out to grass    a riposo
• put out to grass    mettere a riposo
• the grass is (always) greener    l'erba (del vicino) è (sempre) più verde

Português (Portuguese)
n. - capim (m) (Bot.), relva (f), grama (f) (Bot.), maconha (f) (gír.), delator (m) (gír.)
v. - apascentar, pastar, cobrir-se de relva

idioms:

• grass on    delatar alguém
• grass over    cobrir o solo com grama
• grass roots    com origem no povo (coloq.)
• grass widow    mulher (f) divorciada, mulher (f) separada
• not let the grass grow under one's feet    não perder tempo, ser rápido no trabalho
• out to grass    despedir alguém por causa da idade
• put out to grass    aposentar (cavalo de corrida)
• the grass is (always) greener    a grama é (sempre) mais verde

Русский (Russian)
трава, злак, газон, лужайка, луг, пастбище, марихуана, доносчик, засевать травой, зарастать травой, пастись, вытаскивать на берег рыбу, подстрелить птицу, стучать на кого-л.

idioms:

• grass on    наябедничать, донести на кого-л.
• grass over    покрывать дерном
• grass roots    основа, источник, простые люди
• grass widow    соломенная вдова
• not let the grass grow under one's feet    действовать быстро и энергично
• out to grass    в отставке
• put out to grass    отправлять в отставку
• the grass is (always) greener    (в чужом саду) яблоки всегда слаще

Español (Spanish)
n. - césped, pasto, hierba, yerba, delator, chivato, soplón, mariguana, marihuana, marijuana, pastura
v. tr. - cubrir con pasto, alimentar con pasto o hacer pastar
v. intr. - alimentarse con pasto, pastar, cubrirse de pasto

idioms:

• at grass    pastando
• grass on    soplonear, dar el chivatazo
• grass over    cubrirse de hierba
• grass roots    bases, fundamentos, raíces, la masa
• grass widow    mujer cuyo marido está ausente, mujer divorciada, mujer separada de su marido
• not let the grass grow under one's feet    no perder el tiempo, aprovechar la oportunidad
• out to grass    pastorear, salir de vacaciones, jubilarse
• the grass is always greener    la cabra de mi vecina más leche da que la mía, el césped del vecino es más verde, la gallina del vecino pone más huevos que la mía

Svenska (Swedish)
n. - gräs, gräsmatta, betesmark, jordyta (gruv.), tjallare (sl.), gräs (sl. för marijuana)
v. - utfodra, täcka med gräs, breda ut (på gräset) till blekning, fälla, skjuta ner (fågel), hala i land, skvallra på (sl.)

中文（简体）(Chinese (Simplified))
草, 牧场, 草原, 使吃草, 放牧, 在...上种草, 使长满草, 长草

idioms:

• grass on    告发
• grass over    将...撞倒
• grass roots    农业区, 基层, 基础
• grass widow    离婚的女子, 被抛弃的女子
• not let the grass grow under one's feet    不失时机
• out to grass    将...赶去吃草, 将...免职, 将...赶走
• put out to grass    将...赶去吃草, 将...免职, 将...赶走
• the grass is (always) greener    别人有的东西看起来总是比自己的好

中文（繁體）(Chinese (Traditional))
n. - 草, 牧場, 草原
v. tr. - 使吃草, 放牧, 在...上種草, 使長滿草
v. intr. - 長草

idioms:

• grass on    告發
• grass over    將...撞倒
• grass roots    農業區, 基層, 基礎
• grass widow    離婚的女子, 被拋棄的女子
• not let the grass grow under one's feet    不失時機
• out to grass    將...趕去吃草, 將...免職, 將...趕走
• put out to grass    將...趕去吃草, 將...免職, 將...趕走
• the grass is (always) greener    別人有的東西看起來總是比自己的好

한국어 (Korean)
n. - 풀, 잔디, 지표면, 벼과 식물, 밀고자
v. tr. - 풀로 덮다, 방목하다
v. intr. - 풀을 뜯다, 밀고하다

idioms:

• grass on    ~에 대해 밀고하다
• grass over    풀이 자라다, 풀로 덮이다
• put out to grass    ~을 방목하다, 해고하다, 때려 눕히다
• the grass is (always) greener    남의 떡이 커 보인다

日本語 (Japanese)
n. - 草, 牧草, 草地, 芝生, 牧草地, 春, 地表
v. - 草を生えさせる, 草で覆う, 放牧する
adj. - 一般大衆の

idioms:

• grass on    密告する
• grass over    打ち倒す
• grass roots    草の根, 地表に近い土壌, 基盤, 選挙民, 農業地帯
• grass widow    夫が不在の妻, 離婚している妻
• not let the grass grow under one's feet    好機を逸する
• out to grass    遠いところ
• put out to grass    放牧する, 解雇する, 暇を出す
• the grass is (always) greener    隣の芝生は青い

العربيه (Arabic)
‏(الاسم) حشائش, اعشاب, مخبر : جاسوس, (فعل) يغطي شيئا بالعشب, يطعم الحيوانات بالحشيش, يخبر : يتجسس‏

עברית (Hebrew)
n. - ‮עשב, דשא, חשיש, מודיע, מריחואנה (מדוברת), אספרגוס (מדוברת)‬
v. tr. - ‮הלשין, חשיש, כיסה בעשב, מודיע, נתן מרעה, הפיל (יריב), הוריד (ציפור) ביריה‬
v. intr. - ‮הודיע או הלשין למשטרה‬