Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • In botany, the largest order among endogenous plants except the orchids, and the most important in the entire vegetable kingdom, everywhere distributed throughout the globe, and comprising 300 genera and over 3,000 species.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun the grasses: chiefly herbaceous but some woody plants including cereals; bamboo; reeds; sugar cane.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun the grasses: chiefly herbaceous but some woody plants including cereals; bamboo; reeds; sugar cane

Etymologies

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Examples

  • Near the Sierra Madre Oriental, the scrub becomes a strict combination of Agave victoria-reginae with lechuguilla, guapilla (Hechtia glomerata), barreta (Helietta parviflora), sotol (Dasylirion sp.) and a well-developed herbaceous stratum composed of gramineae, leguminosae and cacti.

    Chihuahuan desert 2008

  • Stipa cleistogenes is found in approximately 40 percent of the area while in highly elevated areas herbs such as Cleistogenes gramineae are prevelant.

    Selenge-Orkhon forest steppe 2008

  • You know the bamboo as a "cane;" but for all that it is a true grass, belonging to the natural order of _gramineae_, or grasses, the chief difference between it, and many others of the same order, being its more gigantic dimensions.

    The Plant Hunters Adventures Among the Himalaya Mountains Mayne Reid 1850

  • It would take up many pages of our little volume to enumerate the various species of _gramineae_, that contribute to the necessities and luxuries of mankind; and other pages might be written about species equally available for the purposes of life, but which have not yet been brought into cultivation.

    The Plant Hunters Adventures Among the Himalaya Mountains Mayne Reid 1850

  • It is found in the greatest abundance in certain seeds, in nuts, almonds, and others, in which the starch of the gramineae is replaced by oil.

    Familiar Letters on Chemistry Justus Freiherr von Liebig 1838

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