Grass

Grasses are the most successful plants on Earth—they feed humanity, clothe the prairies, and underpin entire civilizations. Rice, wheat, corn, sugarcane, and bamboo are all grasses. The family Poaceae covers 40% of Earth's land surface, supports most terrestrial herbivores, and provides 50% of human calories. No other plant family comes close to this dominance.

The Grazing Adaptation

Grasses solved the herbivory problem by embracing it. Most plants grow from the tip; grasses grow from the base. When a grazer bites off the top, the grass simply keeps growing. This basal meristem—the growth point protected at ground level—means grasses can be cut, grazed, burned, and mowed indefinitely without dying. They evolved to be eaten.

Grasses don't resist consumption; they're designed for it. The more they're grazed, the more they spread.

The business parallel is subscription models and usage-based pricing: products designed to be consumed repeatedly rather than purchased once. Grasses discovered that growth from the base enables unlimited harvesting from the top. Media companies that monetize ongoing attention rather than single transactions follow grass economics.

Rhizome Networks

Many grasses spread through underground rhizomes—horizontal stems that send up new shoots. A single grass plant can colonize entire fields through clonal expansion. The visible blades are just nodes in a hidden underground network. This rhizome strategy enables rapid territory capture and extraordinary resilience: damage above ground doesn't affect the network below.

Bamboo demonstrates the extreme version: bamboo 'forests' are often single organisms connected by massive rhizome networks. When one area is cut, resources flow from the network to regenerate it. This distributed architecture makes bamboo functionally immortal—some groves have persisted for thousands of years.

Civilization Foundation

The agricultural revolution was really the grass revolution. Humans domesticated wheat 10,000 years ago, rice 9,000 years ago, and corn 9,000 years ago. Every major ancient civilization built its food supply on grass cereals. The ability to store grass seeds (grain) through winter enabled permanent settlement, population growth, and complex society. Grasses made cities possible.