Landscape Lexicon: Grasslands
- Devayani Khare
- Sep 30
- 9 min read
Dear Reader,
There’s something wondrous in being able to pull together a collection of words that seem to define similar landscapes, and sift through them to identify the subtle differences. Here’s the previous landscape lexicon on wetlands. Perhaps, these lexicons can serve as a record of words we’re half-forgetting, as we lose our connections with the landscapes they describe.
In this landscape lexicon, I want to explore how we define grasslands — a transitional landscape governed by precipitation and dominated by grasses, but also play host to shrubs, herbs, sedges, rushes, legumes, and the occasional tree.As some of the largest biomes on the planet, grasslands can be found on every continent except Antarctica. Over time, these ecosystems have been regulated by droughts, freezing spells, wildfires, floods, anthropogenic fires, grazing, agriculture, and other factors. Despite such adverse conditions, grasslands continue to thrive, and dictate the rhythms, routines and rigours of the species that live there.
In this essay, we’ll trace the origin of grasslands through geologica
l time, understand why they are considered as transitional landscapes, explore some of the myriad words we use to describe them, with examples from around the globe.
When and How Did Grasslands Evolve?
To understand how grasslands evolved, researchers study macro- and microfossils of grasses, along with animal fossils, and carbon isotopes. The earliest fossil records of grasses date back to the late Early Cretaceous period (~145 to 100.5 million years ago), a time when conifers, cycads, and flowering plants thrived, and dinosaurs roamed the planet. Interestingly, dinosaurs played a crucial role in preserving the fossil records of early grasses — their fossilised poop, or coprolite, is a rich source of phytoliths, or microscopic mineral remains of plants. (Note: Phytoliths are also used to reconstruct past environmental conditions, and in archaeology to understand ancient human civilizations.)
Between the Cretaceous and the Paleogene (~66 to 23 million years ago), the records are sparse but indicate that grasses were present, though not as dominant as they are today, and that major groups were diversifying during this period.
The period that followed, the Neogene (~23 to 2.6 million years ago), witnessed an explosion of grasses. This may have been an indication that global climatic changes may have favoured open habitats over swampy, forested ones. As open habitats expanded into areas that were too dry for forests, grasses evolved different metabolic pathways to capture carbon dioxide during photosynthesis. The primitive, frost-nand-cold-tolerant C3 grasses gave way to warm-loving, wet and dry season C4 grasses. There are several theories for the transition from C3 to C4 grasses — the latter being more dominant in landscapes today, but we won’t delve into those.
During the Pleistocene (~2.6 million years ago to the present), the polar ice caps in the northern hemisphere expanded and covered parts of North America and Eurasia, only to melt away. As the glaciers retreated, large swathes of the planet were carpeted with grasslands. The steppe-tundra, where mammoths roamed, emerged as the largest biome. Today, grasslands remain among the largest biomes on Earth.
Through human history, grasslands have been torched, trampled and tamed into semi-natural landscapes. Early hunting cultures set fires to maintain and extend grasslands, providing better visibility of prey and preventing fire-intolerant trees and shrubs from taking hold. Livestock grazing by pastoralist communities further altered grasslands into pasturelands. Over the past 10,000 years or more, humans have been cultivating and domesticating grasses, such as rice, wheat, maize, sorghum, barley, oats, millets, sugarcane, among others.
Although grasslands are widespread today, most of them are severely disturbed and degraded due to intense development. As we learn more about their ecosystem functions, such as serving as wildlife habitats and corridors, pasturelands for livestock, nutrient storage and cycling, carbon sequestration, and preventing soil erosion, we may appreciate and restore them better.
What is a Grassland?
Grasslands are often classified by their distinct vegetation, which can indicate factors such as temperature, rainfall, soil moisture, weather conditions, or altitude. As transitional landscapes — occurring where it’s too wet to be a desert, and too dry to be a forest — grasslands may alter dramatically with climatic changes. Grasslands are considered to be among the most species-rich areas, sometimes rivalling tropical rainforests in diversity. Species that live here have evolved to cope with conditions that limit the survival of woody vegetation, such as climatic extremes, changes in soil conditions, fire, and herbivory, allowing grasslands to expand despite these challenges. The resilience of grasslands and the species that inhabit them explains why they occupy roughly 40% of the world’s terrestrial area.
Early classifications of grasslands are broadly based on their geography:
Tropical and subtropical grasslands - areas located between 30°N and 30°S latitudes, characterized by a warm, tropical climate with distinct wet and dry seasons, populated by grasses and shrubs.
Temperate grasslands - grasslands with hot summers, cold winters, and moderate rainfall, located between 30° and 50° latitudes, in both hemispheres.
Montane grasslands - high altitude grasslands that occur beyond the tree line at any latitude, characterized by cool temperatures, short growing seasons, and harsh winds. Tundra grasslands are a type of montane habitat that flourished during the Pleistocene Ice Ages, but have since transitioned into forests or steppes.
Desert or xeric grasslands - sparse grasslands that occur where extreme temperatures reign, and low amounts of rain drain the surface, with species uniquely adapted to the challenge of water scarcity.
Grasslands are also characterised by their susceptibility to flooding and wildfire cycles. Some grasslands experience seasonal or annual flooding, such as the Pantanal, which stretches across Brazil, Bolivia, and Paraguay, or the Everglades in Florida, United States. Some grasslands rely on wildfires, caused by lightning strikes, anthropogenic accidents, or controlled fires. Fires reduce leaf litter, allow sunlight to reach the soil, unlock nutrients from decaying plant and animal matter that encourages new growth and microbial activity, and help maintain grassland vigour. Floods and fire are essential elements of natural systems, and conservation programmes are increasingly looking at introducing these in safe, controlled ways to encourage grasslands.
A Grassland By Any Other Name
Here’s a compilation of grasslands that may be more familiar than those based on geography alone, and will be better additions to a landscape lexicon:
Steppes, if your school geography holds you in good stead, may conjure up a cold, grassland plain connecting the Far East to West Asia, Europe, and Russia. In my imagination, the steppes are where the Mongol hordes reside, and their horses ride with the wind. As semi-arid landscapes, steppes can be found in tropical, subtropical, temperate or montane belts across the world. Beyond the better-known Eurasian or Great Steppe, some other examples of cold steppes include Central Europe’s Pannonian Plain, the Patagonian steppes in South America, and parts of Anatolia in West Asia. Subtropical steppes include the north Saharan steppes, parts of Western Texas in the United States, and the Algerian-Moroccan Hautes Plaines.
Savannahs are mixed woodland-grassland mosaics, punctuated by trees and shrubs, located in warm and hot climates. Savannahs are mostly arid, except for seasonal spells of rain. A further classification based on the dominant vegetation can be made: savannah woodland (light canopy of trees and shrubs), grass savannah (without trees or shrubs), tree savannah (more trees), and shrub savannah (more shrubs). Some notable examples of savannahs include the Brazilian savannah or cerrado, India and Nepal’s Terai-Duar savannahs that lie at the foothills of the Himalayas, the Cape York Peninsula in Australia, and the Masai-Mara and Serengeti corridor between Kenya and Tanzania. [I’ve written more about Kenya’s mosaic landscapes here].
Meadows are open grassy patches, with an abundance of wildflowers, sometimes maintained for hay to serve as cattle feed or bedding. In poetry, meadows have served as idyllic, bucolic backdrops, often associated with summer or spring.
Pastures are grassy patches which have been extensively or intensively grazed by livestock, betrayed by hedgerows, regular parcel structures and animal paths, and sometimes, infrastructure like enclosures, temporary shelters, and watering troughs. In a sense, these are permanent grasslands in areas of historic and present-day pastoral activity, disturbed and altered significantly by livestock and humans. The terms pasturage, leas or rangelands may also be used for these landscapes.
Bocage denotes a mixed landscape of pasture and woodlands, and is mostly used in northern Europe and parts of England and Ireland, where pastoral farming is prevalent.
Prairie, a term primarily used in the United States and Canada, was borrowed from the French word for pasture, which was used by the French inhabitants when other European colonisers ‘discovered’ the New World. These long-grass habitats were once the refuge of elk, white-tailed deer, and bison — the latter’s trampling, grazing, and manure deposits led to a diversity of plants. Prairie grasses were well-suited to spells of drought, with their deep roots causing water to percolate into the soil, while holding it in place. Yet when these prairies were converted to agricultural land, severe cycles of drought altered the landscape into a wind-swept, arid dust bowl. Yet agriculture persists, and the prairie ecosystems of the North American continent have diversified into the eastern tallgrass prairie, the western shortgrass prairie, and the central mixed-grass prairie.
Downs are landscapes of rounded, grass-covered hills, sometimes composed of chalky soil, characterized by a lack of trees and used mainly as pasture. In the United Kingdom, valiant efforts are underway to preserve the chalk downs, which serve as biodiversity havens, Sites of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB), with remnants of ancient human civilizations and empires, like flint tools, iron furnaces, hill forts, and even prehistoric, stylised figures of horses drawn in chalk! The term downs is also used across parts of Australia, though it denotes fertile, agricultural lands where food and cash crops are grown.
Our quest for a grassland lexicon would be incomplete without including regional or local words from various geographies that have found their way into English. Here are some examples, undoubtedly, there are many others.
Bushveld, veld, or veldt, derived from Afrikaans, are terms used in southern African countries to describe open, uncultivated grasslands, with scattered trees or shrubs. A further classification can be made based on elevation, climate, and vegetation.
Cerrado represents the vast, wet tropical savannahs of central Brazil. Borrowed from Brazilian Portuguese, Cerrado is primarily used as a proper noun to refer to this specific ecoregion, with occasional usage as a landscape in its own right. Research indicates the Cerrado is among the most biodiverse savannahs, with a high level of endemism — species found only here, and nowhere else on Earth. Partly protected as a UNESCO World Heritage site, and partly under private ownership, with tracts of sacred Indigenous lands, the Cerrado has witnessed serious conflicts between the agribusiness industry, communities, and conservation efforts over the past few decades. I enjoyed this article on the importance of Cerrados.
Pampas, borrowed from the Quechua language of Central America, is also a term used primarily to describe South America’s fertile, low-lying grasslands, which stretch across Uruguay, parts of Argentina, and Brazil. With a climate ranging from temperate to humid subtropical, the Pampas or Pampas plains, have seen intense human activity after the colonization period such as ranching and agriculture, which threatens the fauna and flora.
Llanos represents the broad tropical grassland plains that lies to the east of the Andes in Colombia and Venezuela, in South America. Plant communities include open grasslands, savannas with scattered or clumped trees, and may host gallery forests — vegetation that is irrigated by rivers and streams that stretches into drier terrains. The llanos may experience spells of flooding (llano bajo), or may remain perennially dry (llano alto), much like grasslands across the world.
Muirs/moors & heaths are Scottish terms to describe large, open grassy habitats pruned by cutting and grazing, sometimes irrigated by a bog or waterbody. Muirs or moors tend to be high-elevation landscapes, with cool climate, playing host to a variety of grasses, peat, moss, heather, and bracken. Heaths are lower elevation, less-moist habitats dominated by small woody shrubs. In English literature, moors and heaths are where fairies, elves, sprites and imps wander, the Gothic settings for the Brontë sisters’ novels and Doyle’s The Hound of Baskervilles.
Sholas, derived from the Tamil word solai, denote the unique high-altitude, perennially wet grassland-forest matrix found 1,500 metres above sea level, along the Western Ghats in South India. These montane ecosystems are characterised by rolling grassy patches interspersed with rain-drenched mixed forests of dwarf trees. As mountain-top sholas are geographically isolated by valleys, they are often referred to as ‘sky islands’ — with species evolving in isolation from close relatives, much like Darwin’s finches did across the Galapagos Islands. Here’s a beautiful visual essay on the concept of sky islands and the evolution of different species in isolation.
(If you know of any regional/local words from your part of the world, please add them in the comments with a description.)
