**5. The discounting of grass to single purposes and uses**

**4.1. Ethnobotany, traditional use and the search for resilient grasses**

94 Grasses - Benefits, Diversities and Functional Roles

'next' food, nutraceutical, medicine or biotechnology product.

of species [86].

adaptation and resilience [92].

The search for plants that have been traditionally used for food, technology and particularly medicine to replace ineffective modern creations has triggered a considerable amount of ethnobotanical field research across the planet. A plethora of research has been published, very recently, and I cite just a few here to provide some scope on the richness of information available for study [72–84]. Make no mistake that some of the studies cited are motivated by economics and profiteering, as the planet is scoured for 'new' plant materials that can become the

The drive to find better-yielding drought or flood-resistant cereals will tread heavily on the territory and cultures of Indigenous peoples. We must avoid the past mistakes of colonial resource exploitation, extraction and expropriation, or as Vandana Shiva says, 'biopiracy' [85]. Biopiracy is commonly seen as misappropriation or theft of plant genetic material—in part, or in whole. However, others speculate whether in the rush to find the 'next new', the motivation could be based on mutual aid and, with prior informed consent, results in knowledge transfer that helps bilateral economic development and conservation

Prior informed consent requires the honouring of several UN international conventions. The *Convention on Biodiversity* [87], the *Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity* [88], and most importantly, the *United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples* [89], which set forth global obligations to respect biodiversity and cultural diversity while protecting Indigenous rights to lands and intellectual property. If an outcome of plant exploration is the

With the consent of residents, a study of home gardens in Iberia found TEK and agricultural knowledge to have blended with modern knowledge, resulting in greater social resilience to change [90]. This is attributed to personal changes acquired through learning new knowledge, practices and beliefs. An important point to note is that TEK is not static, but rather grows in response to new knowledge [91]. Rural to urban migration in China has had a negative impact on the environment as modern agriculture supplanted TEK, though through an experimental ecological education programme, the TEK of more ecological agricultural practices was successfully transferred back to the participating agricultural community [91]. Acceptance of TEK and Indigenous low-carbon living is advocated as being the key to climate change

Climate change is an evidence-based wicked problem that may be incrementally and cumulatively solvable if we accept that we are all in it together, and admit that ingenuity may come from outside science. This requires solid doses of knowledge intersectionality, and humility, which requires recognizing and responding to ignorance in decision-making [93]. A final point to note is, '*that a specific unit of knowledge is lost or kept by a society is not as important as whether the society retains the ability to generate, transform, transmit, and apply knowledge'*, which ultimately strengthens socio-ecological resilience [94, p. 646]. Good advice indeed as I con-

tinue this exploration of the changing role of Poaceae in this age of climate change.

documentation of TEK, Indigenous peoples reserve their right to share, or not.

In the 'Western' world particularly, and anywhere else that was exposed to European colonization, 'grass' is a generic term used to describe lawn, turf, sod and pasture. Where did these words originate, what do they really mean and why have they been essentially reduced to single purposes and uses? For the definitions and etymology of the 15 grass-related words shown in **Table 2**, I turned to the *Oxford English Dictionary* (OED) online [95].



plants). If only grass is growing in a slice of land, the words to use are sward [100] or sod [101]. Pasture [102] and grass are related to providing food and space for livestock to graze, while fodder [103] and forage [104] refer to swathes [105] of grass cut from meadows, dried and stored for winter feeding of livestock. A meadow [106] is a land permanently covered with grass (and other herbage [107] or forbs [108]) that is protected from grazing most of the year in order to harvest hay [109] to be used as winter fodder. Cereal only entered the lexicon in

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While turf has retracted in meaning, the term lawn has expanded from its earliest connotation in the 1300s to describe an open space between treed woods that may have been used for pasturing livestock. By 1674 CE, the OED [98] indicates a change in definition to '*a stretch of untilled ground; an extent of grass-covered land'* and a hundred years later, lawn again grew to mean, '*a portion of a garden or pleasure-ground, covered with grass, which is kept closely mown'*. In his monumental *Gardener's Dictionary* [111], Philip Miller, the chief gardener at the Chelsea Physic Garden from 1722 to 1770, expanded on the meaning of lawn, which he described as

*a great Plain in a Park, or a spacious Plain adjoining to a noble Seat. As to the Dimensions of it, it should be as large as the Ground will permit; but never less, if possible, than thirty or forty Acres. As to the Situation of a Lawn, it will be best in the Front of the House, and to lie open to the neighbouring* 

This larger meaning, which Miller expands upon for several pages, certainly coincides with the period-defining works of the English landscape architects Capability Brown (c.1715–1783) and Humphry Repton (1752–1818), who were employed by wealthy landowners to modernize old Medieval gardens and agricultural land into what the designers called 'landscape parks', which would front many country mansions and stately homes throughout Britain, and

Miller's suggestion that the lawn be located at the front of the house was essentially a visual cue to all who passed by to take notice that the landowner was so rich that they did not need the space for pasturing livestock. Landowners with lawns could afford to do nothing with it except look at it, sit on it and take walks on it, while their livestock was pastured somewhere else on the estate. In another display of landowner wealth, labourers were employed to maintain the large acreages of lawn by hand-scything the grass, with some assistance from pasturing sheep to maintain bucolic aesthetics. Fortuitously, the Industrial Revolution overlapped (c1760–1840), and the 1830 invention of the reel lawn mower pulled by horses, along with subsequent refinements throughout the nineteenth century, gave rise to a push mower that

Alongside the Industrial Revolution, the many mechanized inventions allowed an agricultural revolution to occur, shifting surplus labourers from farms into city factories, where they

1818, as the term for edible grains harvested from various grass species [110].

**6. The meaning of lawn**

*Country and not pent up with Trees.*

be admired and then copied elsewhere.

could be used by anyone to maintain a lawn.

follows:

**Table 2.** Words related to grass, extracted from the Oxford English Dictionary online [95].

Old English was spoken between the fifth and twelfth centuries in areas of what is now England and Southern Scotland, and it is from this period that several words related to grass made their appearance. Turf [96] and grass [97] are derived from Old English and make their way into our vocabulary around the same time. However, according to the OED they have never been combined into a single word viz., 'turf-grass' or 'turfgrass', which is commonly encountered in the industry. The second meaning of turf is related to its use in *seisin*, a c1300 feudal term for the conveyance of ownership, which required a witness to observe the physical and literal transfer of a small piece of ground from one person to another. From this meaning, it is easy to see how we talk about personal space in terms of 'my turf', or 'turf wars'.

While today, turf growers and managers would have you believe that turf is just grass or another word for lawn [98], it is clear from the definition that turf has always meant a slice cut from the surface of the land [99], including soil, grass and herbage (other low-growing plants). If only grass is growing in a slice of land, the words to use are sward [100] or sod [101]. Pasture [102] and grass are related to providing food and space for livestock to graze, while fodder [103] and forage [104] refer to swathes [105] of grass cut from meadows, dried and stored for winter feeding of livestock. A meadow [106] is a land permanently covered with grass (and other herbage [107] or forbs [108]) that is protected from grazing most of the year in order to harvest hay [109] to be used as winter fodder. Cereal only entered the lexicon in 1818, as the term for edible grains harvested from various grass species [110].
