What is the 12000 species of grass?
Grasses are actually one of the most diverse and useful of all plant groups, with almost 12,000 species known across the world. The grass family (known as Poaceae) feeds the world: with wheat, rice, maize, sorghum and sugar cane all belonging to Poaceae. Poaceae is the most well-known family within the informal group known as grass. L. Gramineae Juss. With around 780 genera and around 12,000 species, the Poaceae is the fifth-largest plant family, following the Asteraceae, Orchidaceae, Fabaceae and Rubiaceae.
What is the biggest grass?
Giant bamboos are the largest members of the grass family, in the case of Dendrocalamus sinicus having individual stalks (culms) reaching a length of 46 meters (151 ft), up to 36 centimeters (14 in) in diameter and a weight of up to 450 kilograms (1,000 lb). Bamboo is the largest grass in the world, and it can grow taller than a 10 storey building, up to more than 150 feet. Bamboo is a species of grass, and it has a very fast growth rate, with some species jumping as much as 10 feet in a day.
What is the oldest grass?
In 2006, a colony of neptune grass stretching over 8km and thought to be over 100,000 years old, was found off the coast of Ibiza. It is thought to be both the oldest and largest living organism on Earth. The oldest grass fossils date to the late Early Cretaceous and are about 113 to 101 million years old. These fossils are fragments of grass-like epidermis and phytoliths that were found on the teeth of a hadrosaur (duck-billed dinosaur) from China.Scientists have previously dated the earliest grasses to 55 million years ago; after the dinosaurs went extinct. Now, a new 100-million-year-old specimen of amber from Myanmar potentially pushes back grass evolution to the Late Cretaceous.The work is the first evidence that dinosaurs ate grass and that the large grass family, known as Poaceae, had originated and diversified during the Cretaceous era. The results will have important implications for studies of evolutionary interactions between ancient plants and herbivores.The oldest undisputed fossils of grass (scientifically known as Poaceae) date to 56 million years ago. That’s 10 million years after the infamous asteroid impact caused the mass dinosaur extinction 66 million years ago.