Grasses dominate planet Earth. This single family of plants is the foundation of ecosystems over the majority of the habitable land surface and has helped shape the atmosphere and the climate. Grasses enabled key stages of human evolution; they underpin agriculture and therefore civilisation itself. Today they are the main conduit for the sun’s energy into us.
The aim of my book Planet Grass: How one family of plants came to dominate Earth and feed humanity is to tell the story of how grasses came to dominance, what makes grass grass and why they are so important to the modern world. Planet Grass draws together the latest science including palaeobotany, ecology, plant physiology, evolutionary biology and genomics in an accessible form. What emerges are some overarching principles that help us to understand the amazing success of the grasses in transforming our world.
Interactive rotating grass Earth image. Drag to rotate use mouse wheel to zoom. For continuous rotation see Home.
I created this 3D image of the Earth with giant grasses to represent the themes covered in Planet Grass. It illustrates where the major grass crops and grasslands are. I also included a bamboo forest and an Antarctic grass. The grasses are stylised and the areas they cover exaggerated to be visible.
Creation of 3D image of grass Earth: The image is not AI-generated; it is from Python scripts (I did use Copilot to help with writing these) that process data and place 3D grass objects in the software package Blender 5. The following data sources were used to determine geographical distribution of grass objects: