Grasses make up the flowering plant family Gramineae. There are approximately 635 genera and 9,000 species in the grass family, making it the fourth largest family of flowering plants. Grasses, and more specifically the cereals, make up the majority of crops grown world-wide. Sugarcane, a grass, provides much of the world's sugar.
Grasses are food for the majority of the world's domestic and wild grazing animals.
Grasses are the world's most widely-distributed flowering plants. Grasses can be found from above the Arctic Circle, throughout the temperate and tropical regions, and in Antarctica. The vegetative structure of grasses is uniform throughout the family. An individual grass flower is called a floret.