However, grasses are as important as trees. Without grasses, there would be no horses or cattle. Ground-nesting birds that hide their eggs among grasses would die off. Areas that are overgrazed reward us with mud, dust, disappearing soils, floods, and landslides. Like trees, grasses also have great aesthetic value.
Many people feel a bit claustrophobic in dense forests.
They like to live and play in open areas with a balance of trees and grass. Thus, people often vacation in forests, but spend much of their time in clearings, or meadows. The word prairie was sometimes applied to meadows in the great forests of eastern North America. As people moved ever farther west, the meadows got bigger and bigger. In the Midwest, they encountered a fabulous kingdom of tall grasses and scattered trees.