My Science School

The first cereal to be cultivated by Man was wheat. It was probably grown first in Mesopotamia about 6,000 years ago. It later spread to China, Egypt and Europe. In the past 100 years, we have developed many kinds of wheat for different climates.

Today, Man grows wheat more than other grain. Various kinds of food items are made out of wheat. The grain can be stored for years if it is kept dry. Wheat straws used as cattle feed and bedding for livestock. It is also used as fertilizer.

Rice, the second most important grain in the world, grows best in warm, humid regions. Most kinds of rice plants grow in about 10 centimetres of water for much of the growing season. Therefore, the field has to be flooded until the harvest time. Rice is also used for the production of glue, sugar, starch and wine in many parts of Asia. In Japan and China, rice straw is used for making paper.

Corn or maize is another important grain. It is used for the manufacture of corn oil, corn syrup, and kind of sugar called dextrose. Oats, rye, and barley are also important grains. Oats is made into oatmeal, a popular cereal food. The stalk and the grain of oats are used as food for livestock as well.

Rye is a common grain in Northern Europe and Russia. Rye is primarily used as livestock feed. However, people used it for making bread too. Barely, another important grain, is grown for food and for cattle feed. It is also used for brewing beer. Several cereal grasses are together called by the name millet. Millets too are an important food for millions of people across the globe.

 

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Grasses make Earth green and beautiful. There are about 9,000 kinds of grass in the world. Among them, four large groups have a close connection with Man. They are pasture grasses, the sweet grasses, the cereals and the bamboos.

Grass is the favourite food of cattle. Domesticating cows and sheeps was a great option for Man because he did not have to find food for them as they ate grass. The plains, the prairies, and other areas of grass are natural grazing places for cattle. Bluegrass, Buffalo grass, Bermuda grass, and Bent grasses are some of the most sought-after pasture grasses. The cattle can also feed on hay, which is made by drying grass. Hay can be stored as winter feed for grazing animals.

Cereal grass is probably the most important grass in Man’s life. They are the grain grasses with seeds that can be eaten. Cereal grass is named after Ceres, the Roman goddess of grain and of the harvest. They are wheat, rice, corn, oats, barley, rye, and millet.

Bamboo is the tallest among all the grasses. Some of them can grow as tall as tall trees. They can grow very fast too. Some kinds reach a height of about 21 metres in 6 to 8 weeks. One kind of bamboo is said to have grown 90 centimetres in 24 hours! While most bamboos are tall, some varieties grow only a few inches.

A grass sweetens the tea and coffee we drink every day. Of the many sweet grasses, the most important grass is sugarcane. These grasses grow abundantly in sunny, moist, semitropical places. The sweet juice of sugarcane grass is extracted by cutting the talks of the grass into pieces and crushing them. The juice is then strained and the water boiled out of it Molasses and sugar are made out of this juice. Sorghum is another such sweet grass. Sorghum is found across Africa and in parts of Asia.

 

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Cacti undoubtedly find a place in the picture of deserts. One cannot imagine deserts, without them. These plants are designed in a special way to withstand the most hostile conditions in the world.

Cacti are found in all parts of the world. They come in hundreds of shapes and colours. These plants are used for landscaping too. They are admired for their amazing diversity not only in their shape and form but also in their variety of flowers.

Therefore, these plants are seen more frequently in gardens and homes of people than in deserts these days!

Cacti store water in their thick, juicy stem. They do not seem to have leaves at all. However, cacti do have leaves. For a long time, we believed that they lost their leaves in the process of evolution in order to adapt to the hostile desert situations.these plants have leaves, but they are too small to notice. The reduced surface area of leaves helps these plants to save water. In some species, the leaves are remarkably large. Have you observed the prickly spines of the plant? They are, in fact, the leaves of the plant. These needles like leaves save water for the plants. The spines also help them defend themselves from other animals.

Although cacti are usually found in dry deserts, they are also seen in the icy regions of Northern Canada. These plants are found across the globe from hot deserts to tropical rain forests.

 

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You must have seen image of deserts in pictures of movies. The sandy expanse of the landscape is inhospitable for people like us. The sweltering heat of the sun is unbearable. How do plants manage this heat?

Most desert plants have light coloured leaves. These leaves reflect the rays of the sun and thus reduce the effect of heat of the plants. Some plants have the ability to move their leaves throughout the day. The Sun’s rays hit the edges of the leaves and the rest of the leaves are the shade. This helps the leaves to reduce the absorption of heat by the plant, and in turn, saves water.

Some plants in the desert are very clever. Their leaves wilt in the hot desert sun, but regain their freshness in the night. Photosynthesis for these plants takes place in their night and not during the day. They use the light energy collected during the day and use it at night.

Plants such as cacti have thickened stems in spherical shape. This feature reduces the surface area where sunlight hits, and thus saves so much of energy.

 

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Deserts are barren areas that pose hostile conditions to living organisms. The heat there is unbearable for animals and plants there. Infrequent rains make the landscape the least desired place for life. However, there is life in the desert too.

Plants in deserts have long roots that spread out widely, and go deep into the soil. The well-spread and deep roots respond quickly to any trace of moisture in the soil and readily accept it. The leaves of desert plants are designed to adapt to the hot conditions of the region and to preserve water. Some plants have fat, juicy leaves and stems that can preserve and store water for a long time. Some others do not have leaves at all. This prevents any loss of water through evaporation.

Desert plants do not grow fast. Their slow growth rate helps them not to spend precious water to fast. Such plants do not have a make food as frequently as others plants do, in normal conditions. Therefore, they can cantrol their consumption of water.

 

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Antarctica is an ice-covered continent. Life forms normally found in other parts of the world are not found in the region. There atmosphere is not conducive for plants or trees to grow there. Can grass grow in such ice-covered places?

There is a kind of grass known as Antarctic hair grass in the region. It grows primarily in the rocky areas of the Antarctic Peninsula in small, concentrated tufts. These plants generally occur in penguin colonies. The Antarctic hair grass is a fine-leaved, perennial grass. This grass is one of two only flowering plant species living below latitudes of 60 degrees in the Antarctic. The leaf blades of the plant are folded when they are tender. However, as they grow, they develop into long, dark green, erect stems.

They have the ability to withstand high levels of disturbance without withering away. Antarctic hairs grass has a complex and deep root system that keeps them well anchored in their habitats. The roots allow them to absorb water and nutrients easily from their environment too. The grass withstands freezing temperatures during the wintertime by losing its long, slender green leaves. This phenomenon helps them stay alive, without drying away completely.

 

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How tall can a grass grow? When we think of grass, the picture of bamboo never comes to our mind, because of its height.

However, the world’s tallest grass is bamboo. Bamboos sometimes grow to a height about 25 metres. Do you know that the tallest bamboo in the world was found in Kerala? The bamboo stalk was discovered at Pattazhi, in the kollam district, in 1904. It was 37 metres tall! Some bamboos grow as tall as huge trees, whereas some varieties grow only a few inches tall. Bamboos grow very fast too. Some varieties grow up to a metre a day!

The most important use of bamboo is in making furniture and in building houses. The grass is used for making many other things, such as fence posts, bridges, fishing poles, water pipes and musical instruments. In China, tall bamboos are used for the construction of strong walls that can withstand flood and tide and bridges up to 260 metres long. The stems of bamboos are split into strips and they can be woven into rugs, mats, fishing nets, cloth, baskets, and bedding.

The stems are used in agriculture as they can be used as plant stakes. Bamboo shoots are edible and people use them as food.

The Chinese used the word bamboo the first time when they made paper from wood pulp about 2,000 years ago. India and Burma use bamboo extensively for the manufacture of paper today.

 

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Ancient Man satisfied is hunger by gathering fruits from the wild or hunting smaller animals. He was a mere wanderer until then. When he found that the availability of food in a particular place was scarce, he moved to another place, where there was enough food.The major revolution in human life took place when Man started growing his own food, in an organized way. When he learned to cultivate grain yielding grass, Man’s life changed. He could store his food, and keep his supply alive, once he knew to plant grass in a systematic way. He did not have to hunt as often he did before.

The great advantage of grain as food was that it stayed fresh for a long time, if it was kept dry. So now, Man began to save some grain for the bitter winter that would come in the future. Wandering communities and tribes of men now began to settle down in places where the cultivation of grain was possible. These people came to be known as farmers.

It was farming that, in fact, changed the life of Man. The growth and development of human civilization starts from this foundation. Farming gave Man more leisure time. He could afford to design newer and better tools and thus be more creative. One can safely say that cultivation of grain grasses helped Man in the development of civilization.

 

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In our cultural context, grass signifies something unimportant and trivial. Since it is everywhere, we seldom notice, or give it due credit. However, our life is closely connected with grass. The rice and the wheat we consume everyday are products of grass. In fact, all the grains and cereals we eat are grasses. Most pasture plants are grass too. The sugar that we use in our tea and confectionery comes from a grass called sugarcane. There are grasses that we use to perfume our homes and other places such as lemon grass and cetronella. The tallest of all the grasses, bamboo, is also of great importance to us.

The most widespread plant family in the world is grass. Most land-dwelling organisms are dependent on grass of their existence. These little plants provide more food than any other family of green plants. In fact, there are about 9,000 kinds of grasses in the world. Most of them grow on land, while some grow in water.

Have you been to a large pasture? The green expanse of grass, sometimes, covers thousands of square kilometres of natural fields. This great sea of grass is called differently in various parts of the world.

In the United States, it is called a prairie or plain and in England, downs. In Australia, these grasslands are called ranges, in Russia, steppes, in South Africa, veldts and in the tropics, savannahs.

 

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Have you heard the story of the sleeping beauty that slept for one hundred years? Although, not all that happens in stories happens in real life, sleeping seeds can do a far better job than what the sleeping princess can! The seeds of silene stenophylla, a flowering plant found in Siberia, slept under the Arctic ice for more than 30,000 years!

A group of scientists discovered more than 600,000 frozen mature and immature seeds of this plant burried in squirrel burrows near the banks of the river Kolyma in 2007. Arctic ground squirrels are believed to have buried them during the ice Age. With the help of the latest dating techniques, scientists determined that the seeds were around 31,800 years old.

They planted some of the seeds, and tried to germinate some of them. It was a heartening sight to see the ancient plant bringing forth little white blooms and fruits after more than 30,000 years. The discovery, and the experiment, left the plant the most ancient, viable, multi-cellular, living organism on Earth.

 

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