For most plants, to cut off the growing tip is to sentence them to death. But grass is different. Even when cut close to the ground, it grows again within days.
The reason for this is to be found in the growth structure of the grass. The meristem, the part of the plant that forms new cells and hence new growth, is in most flowering plants to be found at the tip of the shoot, i.e. the top of the stem. Removal of the tip of the shoot results in the stop of growth of that shoot. The grasses, however, have their meristems located at the base of each leaf blade, close to the soil. This means that when an animal such as a cow for example, bites off two thirds of a grass stem, the growing point of that stem is still intact and able to continue to grow the remaining part of the stem. This type of growth, known as basal growth, is well adapted to the large herbivores that spread across the open landscapes during the Oligocene and Miocene epochs, some 30 million years ago. The plants and the animals evolved together, each group influencing the other.
The plant’s growth form means that even after being grazed down to a nub the grass will continue to thrive. Not only will it re-grow rapidly from the base of the crown, but the removal of competing plants and the increased illumination of the grass crowns, means that it will become a more dense and compact lawn. See also Grounds Maintenance Gloucester. Here is a useful background explanation of how grasses evolved their unusual growth structure.
A little over 30 years later, Edwin Budding an engineer from England built a mechanical reel mower, utilising a machine that had previously been used for cutting cloth. He could not have known the 30-million-year-old bargain between the grass and the large herbivores that roamed the open landscapes of the Oligocene and Miocene epochs, were being fulfilled. Within a few generations the maintained lawn had become an English obsession.
