Grasses

Grasses cover approximately one quarter of the planet’s land surface; four species?wheat, rice, maize, and sugar?provide 60 per cent of human calorie intake. Almost all of us at some point play on, relax on, plant, tend, or harvest grasses for our own pleasure or sustenance; yet for all that their importance to us is not commonly understood. It is predicted that by 2050 the world’s population will be approximately nine billion, and 90 per cent of the planet’s land area will be affected by human activities. To feed ourselves we will be more dependent on grasses than ever before.
Grasses explores and explains the history of our relationship with these humble yet vital plants since the end of the last Ice Age to the present day. Grasses, perhaps more than any other plant or crop, show the effect of human influence: farmed on a massive scale, they are the ultimate staple crop. In turn we are also influenced by grasses, often fighting to preserve our ?green space” and public parks. Stephen Harris describes this relationship against the background of our heightened awareness of climate change: in the future we will have to balance our needs of grass as food, grass as living space, and potentially even grass as fuel?if grasses have always been an vital part of the human story, this book shows that they will only become more so.

Stephen Harris is the Druce Curator of the Oxford University Herbaria and a University Research Lecturer at Green Templeton College, Oxford. He is the author of many books, most recently Planting Paradise: Plants in Cultivation (1502?1900).