The Lawn That Conquered the Planet

Stand back far enough and one family of plants has quietly conquered the planet — and used us to do it. Grasses: wheat, rice, corn, sugarcane, plus the lawns we water and the pastures we graze. By weight, the crops humanity grows now rival much of the wild plant life left on Earth, and we have flattened forests across whole continents to make room for more of them.

A grass cannot move, cannot think, cannot choose. And yet, by being edible and obliging, a handful of grass species got the cleverest animal on the planet to clear away their competitors, carry their seed worldwide, guard them from pests, and hand over most of its farmland to their cause. We did not conquer the land. We became the means by which the grasses did.

The dominant living thing on the surface of the Earth, by some measures, is a field of grass — and we are its groundskeepers.

And if a grass can run the world through us — were we ever really the ones in charge?