Earlier this year, Mouse Hecht had an unusual dream. The Science Track moderator dreamt that Dragon Con 2025 hosted a panel all about grass—and that Mouse was woefully unprepared. Angry attendees clamored for botanical knowledge that they and their fellow track staff were unprepared to provide. After waking, Hecht swore that their nightmare wouldn’t come true. Gradually, they assembled a panel of grass experts to answer the questions con-goers might have. Botanists Brian Kvitko, Cassandra Quave, and Jason Wallace heeded the call. On Saturday 9AM, they and their co-hosts sat down in front of Hilton 209-211 to address the Dragon Con public in “WTF is Grass?”
The moderators kicked off with a clarification of what qualified as grass in the context of the panel. Grasslike plants are often distinguished as either sedges, rushes, or grasses. Sedges have triangular stems, rushes have round stems, and grasses have knobby stems. This last group is known as the “true grasses.” These members of the family Gramineae (also known as Poaceae) are diverse, omnipresent, and crucial to humankind. Examples include rice, wheat, corn, bamboo, and countless others.
Grasses were among the first species to see domestication and culinary processing. All this despite grasses’ phytoliths (silica deposits), tough sheaths, and general inedibility. Most herbivores have elaborate digestive systems and continually growing teeth to contend with the grasses they consume, but humans have neither. Humans instead process their grasses ahead of consumption by physically or chemically breaking them down.
Humans have selected for varieties with large seeds for greater nutritional value and easier propagation. Corn, for example, was developed from the winnowy teosinte grasses of Central America. Beginning with cobs no larger than a human pinky, ancient agriculturalists gradually bred the bushy, starchy varieties of corn we enjoy today. Teosinte is so different from modern-day corn that it was only after genome comparison that scientists were able to determine that teosinte was corn’s direct genetic ancestor.
Sorghum, a hardy relative to corn, shows promise as a food source. Resistant to high temperatures, poor soil, and low moisture, sorghum can thrive in a variety of climates. Although it is mostly grown in Africa and Asia, it has seen more cultivation recently in the American South.
This humble family of plants seems omnipresent in human society, and that’s no coincidence. From pre-history, grasses have been crucial to humankind society, and, as our scientists argue, this shows no sign of changing.
