**2. Historical perspective on Poaceae as food**

**1.2. Human adaptation and resilience to changing climate**

90 Grasses - Benefits, Diversities and Functional Roles

much uncertainty in both farm fields and dinner bowls.

to feed livestock, from the UK to the US in 2016.

all Poaceae in these times of climate change is threatened [20].

restore 90 km<sup>2</sup>

*collected'* [27, p. 3075].

Rather than dwell on whether an unsolvable wicked problem with potentially dire outcomes for West Africa has been described [14], it seems prudent to recognize that it may be wicked and that there will be parallel scenarios playing out elsewhere on this planet sharing the consequences of climate change. We know problems can't be solved without trying solutions, most often at great cost, including loss of life from famine. In the case of food security and climate change in vulnerable regions, good enough/not good enough strategies still leave too

Meanwhile, the privileged developed world needs to re-assess their relationship with grass simply as garden bling or amenity, and learn to associate grass with edible cereals, multifunctionality and survival. There is, for example, an urgent need to reduce and transition from turf seed production, the majority of which is produced in Oregon, to growing sufficient and locally specific climate-adapted cereals [18]. This would remove the burden of, for example, the US importing cereal products from climate-vulnerable countries, while reducing pressure on its own low climate-adaptive southeastern region, which will become an unreliable source of wheat in extreme drought episodes. Despite the US being a major wheat exporter, *Farming Monthly National* [19] reported the export of 63,000 metric tonnes of feed wheat, that is, wheat

In forecasting shifting climate scenarios to 2070, it was found that Poaceae as a family is unlikely to adapt through climate niche change and migration to more amenable habitat [20]. This is particularly troublesome given that maize, rice and wheat are not only the major plants cropped globally, they currently account for 89% of all cereal production, and supplied 42% of all the calories consumed by humans in 2009 [21]. Instead, seed saving and banking of landraces and non-domesticated species, combined with assisted migration that mimics natural range expansion to safe sites, may become an active management strategy to protect biodiversity, and the food potential of species for the future [22]. It appears crucial to the search for more robust species from the wild to avoid the genetic bottlenecks that occurred through polyploidization events in the domestication of wheat [23]. Before the selection of a few species that led to complete domestication, experimentation with multiple grass species occurred in multiple places across the Fertile Crescent region for centuries [24]. Even then, at the end of the day, looking for new grasses with the potential to replace the staple grains of the past 20,000 plus years may be an exercise in futility (or another wicked problem), if the survival of

The challenge is further exacerbated by the conversion of global grassland ecosystems to other land uses, resulting in their degradation, and loss to urbanization [25]. Examples from dry grassland ecosystems on various continents provide a somewhat daunting perspective on the magnitude of effort required to repair landscapes needed for various ecosystem services, including food production [26]. And for additional insight regarding scale, over a period of 12 years more than 500,000 kg of seed from around 250 species was harvested to

were replanted '*required roughly 13,000 kg of seed, approximately 5% (640 kg) of which was hand* 

of Minnesota tallgrass prairie, and that a typical year in which 1000 hectares

*Certain cereals and pulses (legumes) were domesticated in very ancient times. In about 8000 BC in the Fertile Crescent of the Near and Middle East (present-day Syria, Iran, Iraq, Turkey, Jordan, Israel), wheats, barley, lentil, pea, bitter vetch, chickpea, and possibly faba bean, were brought into cultivation by the Neolithic people. These crops spread from the point of origin. Archaeological evidence indicates that the wheats, and some of the legumes, had reached Greece by 6000 BC and evidence of their presence within that millennium has been found in the Danube Basin, the Nile valley, and the Indian subcontinent (Pakistan). Dispersal continued through Europe, the crops reaching Britain and Scandinavia in 4,000-2,000 BC. There was quite a hiatus in this dispersal until the sixteenth and following centuries when, following the exploration and colonization of various countries, wheat species were taken to North and South America, South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand.* [30, p. xxviii]

During the Paleolithic (Stone Age), which began around 2.5 million years BCE and lasted until the global advent of agriculture in various unglaciated places around 10,000 years ago, wild grass seed from many species was gathered from the landscape for food [5, 31]. It has been previously thought that '*seeds and beans were rarely eaten and never in large amounts on a daily basis'* in the Paleolithic [32, p. 75]. Recent archaeology at Paleolithic sites in Southern Italy has now found evidence that by 32,600 BCE, hunter-gatherers were gathering substantial quantities of wild grains, primarily temperate cool climate *Avena* (oat) species, and had devised stone pestle-grinder tools for the conversion of the grain to flour [33].

Around 8000 BCE, the process of selecting best-performing grains led to the domestication of some cereal crops that were cultivated in the Middle East, and then distributed westwards into Africa, and eastwards to South Asia. As glacial ice retreated, domesticated grains moved north into Europe to replace those wild gathered from around 5500 to 5000 BCE [32, 34]. About the same time that wheats (einkorn [*Triticum monococcum* L.], emmer [*T. dicoccum* Schrank ex Schübl.] and barley [*Hordeum vulgare* L.]) were domesticated, domestication of two other Poaceae, rice (*Oryza sativa* L.) in China and maize (*Zea mays* L.) in Mesoamerica, was also occurring [24]. Although Poaceae is but fifth largest of the plant families, the top four food plants in the world are from Poaceae (in ranked order): sugar cane (*Saccharum officinarum* L.), maize, wheat (*T. aestivum* L.) and rice [35].

In other parts of Europe, quackgrass was considered an important survival food during the First World War when seeds and rhizomes were ground into flour as a substitute for wheat and rye [46], while in Australia the rhizomes are ground sometimes into survival bread flour [50]. Before the First World War, it is reported that the mucilage exuded from quackgrass roots was as effective as glue that the United States imported a quarter-million pounds from Europe annually [51]. While quackgrass is not indigenous to North America, it soon became naturalized and, for example, the plants were used by the Okanagan-Colville peoples as a type of pit cooking container [52], while the White Mountain Apache Tribe of Arizona used quackgrass seeds for food [53]. In Ladakh, a region in Jammu and Kashmir, the northern-most state in India, powdered quackgrass rhizomes are used to traditionally treat irritated bladders

Beyond Turf and Lawn: Poaceae in This Age of Climate Change

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Through the twentieth century, as the science of chemistry and modern technology expanded, herbalists were denounced as 'quacks' and herbal medicines were replaced by the component chemical compounds synthesized in laboratories and industrial factories [55]. Traditional knowledge has eroded or disappeared, as reported, for example, in Bali [56], or was saved for times of great need to survive famine, war and natural disaster without modern props. The repression and loss of cultural and ecological memory instigated by the colonialization of Indigenous peoples in North America and elsewhere [57, 58] has also turned around and traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) informing herbal medicine is moving from the alter-

There is a strong tug between staying local and respecting traditional foods and medicines, and embracing the benefits of globalization through access to new, potentially more tasty or effective products. This dilemma is articulated both from the Eastern perspective, where practitioners of Asian botanical medicine suggest that those working in the West should use Western herbs [62], or whether Eastern traditional use rules apply in the West [63]. In the West (Europe), it is posited that Western herbal medicine in the United Kingdom refers to '*using plants largely native to Europe, within a philosophical tradition arising from European thought'*, and

By the turn of the twenty-first century, this attitude began to turn around as, for example, 'super bugs' invading humans have developed antibiotic resistance, and plant pathogens have likewise developed resistance to pesticides [65–68]. Reductionism in modern science is proving to be less helpful in facing new challenges because it compartmentalizes complex topics and ignores TEK, when there is considerable urgency and essentiality in supporting '*the integration of methods and results from different approaches and levels of analysis'* [69, p. 466]. A strong case is made for the integration of evidence-based medicine with TEK in order to avoid reductionism, and understand the plant holistically and ecologically, instead of breaking it down into useable parts and extracts [70]. Preserving TEK has significant positive implica-

to avoid both North American and Eastern plants and healing traditions [64, p. 165].

tions for local socio-ecological resilience, and adaptation to change [71].

and promote urination [54].

native fringe to a larger arena [59–61].

**4. From quackgrass to quackery and back**

While Poaceae currently has around 12,000 species, the majority have never been domesticated, and remain wild [36]. Though undomesticated, the harvesting of wild grass seeds has occurred on all inhabited continents [37], and persists right up to the present day in many parts of the world, even though seed collection and processing can be challenging for various reasons such as widespread distribution patterns with low abundance, shattering, lodging or competition with more dominant species. People turn to gathering wild grass seeds for various reasons—as a basic survival strategy to counter famine, poverty or economic depression, to maintaining traditional agricultural practices, preserving the traditional recreational or cultural activities of gathering of local wild food and plant medicines [29, 38–40], or for ecosystem restoration and biodiversity conservation purposes [41–43].

Of those species domesticated, grasses can be loosely categorized as edible (e.g. cereal grains), medicinal, ornamental, pasture (e.g. fodder and forage), turf (lawn), technological (e.g. biofuel, building, paper, clothing, oils, perfumes and craft materials) and spiritual (e.g. ceremonial smudging and smoking, incense, and other cultural rituals). Some grasses fall into several categories, and some grasses may have a domestic use unique to a single place, while considered as useless elsewhere [44]. Other native grasses domesticated somewhere for food, medicine or technology are dismissed outright as problematic weeds or invasive species somewhere else, with little regard for their rich histories, and traditional uses in their places of origin.
