VI 
GIANT GRASSES 
I SN’T IT ODD that grass in the tropics grows to a 
height of two hundred feet, while here in the North 
we think of it as a modest ground-covering under foot! 
The giant bamboo of India, China, Japan, and other 
parts of the tropics is grass, though one is not likely to 
think of it as such. It grows in groves that compare 
quite favorably in height and density with forests of trees 
anywhere. 
The popular conception of grass as a modest ground 
growth is not a proper one. The grasses taken together 
make up, in the vegetable kingdom, a very important 
group, which, when it is measured, is far from being 
modest in size. 
Wheat is, of course, a grass. It is the great bread grain 
of the Western World and is more important to man than 
any other plant that grows. Rice is a close relative of 
wheat and is equally important in the East. More than 
half the people in the world, in the densely populated 
countries of the Orient, live largely on rice, which is a 
grass grain. 
Corn, which is the most valuable crop grown in the 
United States, seems even less like a grass than does 
wheat. Nevertheless it is one. The sugar cane of Cuba, 
which is so important to the sweet tooth of the American, 
is likewise a grass. Then all are topped by the tropical 
bamboo, which is used in building houses and which 
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