Most of us would readily agree that this is a flower

Many people would not think that this is a flower -because it doesn't have big, brightly colored petals, strong fragrance, and so on

However, grasses are true flowering plants

Flowers like these have beautiful conspicuous flowers mainly to attract the insects or other animals that pollinate them.

They use a lot of precious resources to produce bright petals, smells, nectar and so on

grasses have a different strategy - They transport their pollen from plant to plant on our nearly constant summer breezes

On Wyoming’s arid plains and sagebrush steppes, it makes sense to use the wind to distribute pollen and to use precious water and nutrients for other kinds of production

Yep, grasses, which are indeed flowers, learned thousands of years ago to use one of Wyoming’s cheapest and most abundant energy sources - the wind - to propagate themselves.

Maybe, just maybe, we could learn something from grasses I'm Gene Gade of the University of Wyoming Cooperative Extension Service