They’re hard to ID, sometimes overlooked in plant surveys, and likely underappreciated, so it’s always nice to meet folks who know what plant group actually rules
I’m a relative newcomer to studying the group, and one who came by it via a culinary route. It was a revelation to me when I found out my daily sustenance was a grass! That got the ball rolling.
But the seeds of my (subconscious) interest in open grassy habitats probably go back way before then. I remember playing SimLife in the 1990s and I always extensively pushed grasses when constructing my ecosystem.
How did you come by your passion?
For purposes of this thread, the families would include at least the Poaceae, Cyperaceae, and Juncaceae.
Lateral thinking. A sci fi novel by Sheri S Tepper called Grass. I happened to read it when we staying at the Wilderness, in a chalet overlooking wetland with tall grass. There be monsters in there ! also people on holiday in kayaks ;~)
You’ve shared the story of how you became the Sedge Queen, but how did you get into order Poales in the first place? To quote the title of this post, How did you start out with nature and become a botanist?
I’ve thought about reading that! The only thing that delays it is that I was thinking it’s less about the native biology, and more about the social, economic, and political machinations in the world.
I HAVE read a lot of other fiction like Stephen King’s Tall Grass and his Children of the Corn where graminoids take a prime spot though. And let’s not forget “The Death of Grass” by John Christopher from the 1950s, where a virus wipes out the Poaceae in the world and causes the downfall of civilization.
And yep, on the lookout for more such books (not including all the horror fiction involving corn fields please). Or any movies that are the same!
Yep, except it’s Arundo donax, which looks like it’s just as big of an invasive there as it is over here!
I got into the plant community when I was 16, back in 2022. I’ve been on iNat for less than two years and was quite immature at the time. Initially, it was the pandemic lockdowns, combined with the release of the BBC documentary The Green Planet that year, that inspired me to start observing plants.
Living in an “urban village” without a typical backyard, I had to make do with my daily routine. I started photographing the wild grasses in the roadside green belts and uploading them whenever I went downstairs for my daily nucleic acid tests. A significant portion of these were Poaceae (grasses)…
Of course, this behavior was controversial. Because I uploaded an excessive number of grass records, some people suspected me of ‘data farming’ (spamming), which they felt lowered the quality of the community. Because of this, I don’t upload grasses as frequently anymore.
Right now, the top ten species in my observation list are almost all the most common local urban weeds. This is the result of uploading wild grasses observations back then. I urgently need expert identifiers specializing in Poaceae to join and help out, especially for the East Asian region where I am located.
Hmmmm…I am not sure I understand this. Not generally a good idea to upload every single instance of (for example) the same species when it’s only a few meters apart (especially given that those are probably just ramets of the same genet), but why would being very active in surveying the actual populations of an area not be a good idea?
It’s possible that I was indeed doing what you described back then. Honestly, it was a result of my immaturity at the time. However, I feel that back then, my approach was more about taking one photo per individual and creating one observation for each.
Looking back from my current perspective, I don’t think either approach is ideal. Whether it’s splitting different branches of the same plant into multiple observations, or creating a separate record for every single individual of the same species in one spot, I feel both are somewhat similar to spamming.
On top of that, I feel a significant portion of the community tends to look down on ‘weeds’ simply because they are so common. Many people seem to be chasing after beautiful and rare species, which feels a bit like species discrimination. I really dislike this kind of prejudice. As someone who wants to document and involve myself with all forms of life as much as possible, I believe species discrimination is completely unacceptable.
Eh, people are people. You are correct. They tend to devalue those things that are common and chase after the rare. Saying that, they have no business telling you what you can upload, especially given that ‘weeds’ probably have a greater impact on the landscape and surroundings (and thus might be of greater practical value) than the occasional rarer “pretty” species.
I am old, OLD school. I’ve had an interest in biology since I was a youngster. In advance of taking basic biology in high school (SoCal), the biology teacher offered to give me a copy of Jepson’s Manual of the Plants of California, so I sat down with that and started learning the arcane botanical terminology and going through keys to grasses, sedges, rushes, etc., one at a time…i.e., the hard way. But it’s stuck!
I wish I had your tenacity. And I taught Bio 101, so I was pretty up to date on the typical parts of flowering plants. But when it got to grasses, I had to learn a new set of botanical terms and apply them to minuscule structures. Like I said, it takes a certain kind of masochism to get into grass ID smh
I started out interested in animals. I became a serious birdwatcher. I was interested in their habitat, too. (Also, plants are much easier to catch.) I learned how to identify some plants with the help of Omaha botanist David Sutherland. He was very patient, but I became a bit embarrassed with needing his help so much. Doing the hard work to learn how to ID plants didn’t seem worthwhile when Sutherland could ID them while just walking past.* Sedges were the only kind of plant I brought in that he didn’t know right off. He actually had to sit down and key them. Learning sedges seemed like it could fill a gap. It seemed worthwhile.
(* One time I was laboring over what I thought was a Poa (bluegrass). Sutherland walked by to get something out of a cabinet and asked, “Why are you using that book?” (Flora of the Great Plains.) “It’s not in there!” Just glancing at it, he had recognized the generic little plant as Sclerochloa dura, Hardgrass, not previously known from the Great Plains.** )
(** That same year, botanists in Kansas found the Sclerochloa in their state and in fact documented it in every Kansas county. A real stealth invader.)
When I moved to Oregon years later, I planned to research sedge taxonomy for my doctorate. However, my major professor got a small grant to solve a fescue (grass) taxonomy mystery. Sigh. I researched the fescues and also did a major sedge project on the side. Took a long time to get my doctorate while doing two different kinds of research! So now graminoids are me, I guess. Except for the great majority of them, that I know little or nothing about.
My earliest memories involve stalking toads in my yard and neighbor’s yards. I was encouraged by my grandmother and parents to learn about nature. I never wasn’t involved with nature, once I could toddle around on my own.
Trivia side note: Sherri Tepper lived here in Colorado until about the early 90s. A lot of what she wrote is what’s now considered climate fiction, and she described herself as obsessed about a number of subjects, including environmental issues. One of my favorites is her novel After Long Silence, which involves ecological issues on a colony planet. There’s political machination as well, but it’s all in service to the human impacts on the world of Jubal.
Coming from someone who struggles with ID, I used to hate and envy those people. But then I realized it usually comes from long experience (the ability to holistically look at an organism and immediately know what it is) , so kudos to them.
A lot of writers seem to hail partly from that state. I know Stephen King stayed there as well for awhile, and based some of his classic works like The Shining on it.
ps. Love that state. if it wasn’t for the snow, I’d relocate there.
Central Europe
They planted Acacia on the dunes to stop the wind blowing sand into the city, followed by pine and other trees. By the 1960’s it was a managed forest. The small clearings, left by logging, were first colonised by a Stipa with hairy awns longer than I was tall. It is called, translated, the Hair of the orphan girl. The afternoon breeze and the sunshine made a shiny, silvery lake of the fluttering awns.
