Category Science

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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Plants and trees are said to respond to music. Music is supposed to induce growth in them and encourage them to produce a higher yield.

Such observations have been put forward on the basis of experiments conducted by scientists. The earliest such study was done by J.C. Bose of India. Several studies have been conducted by Western scientists too, to prove the above observations.

Yet an equal number of studies have been carried out by scientists to prove the theory wrong. They say that plants have no ears to hear, and no brain to process, and understand music

However, plants do respond to the vibration produced by sound. An example of this is the way that the mimosa pudica, or forget-me-not, responds to sound induced vibrations. Vibrations induce electrical signals across the leaflets of this plant and cells at the base of the leaflets respond to it. This kind of responds is known as seismonasty. Though plants may not respond to music, the way humans do, how exactly, and what effects it causes in them, still remain a mystery.

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