Lemon grass, I believe, is similar, though the shoots appear to be much larger than bamboo shoots.
I’m going by fuzzy memory, this may not be 100 percent accurate… When I was a kid I would gently pull out the blade. At the tip there was a lighter piece. I would occasionally eat that. (Maybe that’s what’s wrong with me)
Is that the “fleshy center” or something else?
It doesn’t do any good to eat it unless you decarboxylate it first. Otherwise you won’t get high.
Oh…wait, you mean that stuff that grows on the lawn? Why on earth would anyone want to eat that?
Lemongrass, however, unlike bamboo, is used mainly as a flavoring, not for any nutritional value. In fact, in some dishes it is removed before serving.
So botanically, what makes the the leaves of leafy greens like cabbage/kale/spinach/chard more appropriate for human consumption than the leaves of the true grasses? Is it just the way we’ve cultivated them over time, or is there some evolutionary reason that grasses are mostly consumed by ruminants?
Or, put another way, if grass is mostly indigestible to most animals, why haven’t more plants evolved to be similarly predation-proof, instead of being delicious and nutritious and defenseless like our food crops? Just the way we grew them?
The leafy greens are simply easier for us to eat. They are easier to chew and swallow.
The still offer negligible nutritional value, other than their insoluble fibers.
The “delicious” parts of plants that are eaten by animals are intended to be eaten by animals as part of the plant’s reproductive strategy.
The food crops that we have we have domesticated and changed over thousands of years. If you looked at any of the plants that originated our food crops, they would be barely edible. They left the course of natural evolution, and instead have been evolved intentionally to meet our desires.
The ancestor of cabbage (which also includes kale, Brussels sprouts, broccoli, cauliflower, etc) was a biennial plant originally confined to rocky sea cliffs. It evolved the ability to store food in its leaves in order to survive over the winter. This made it suitable for cultivation to enhance the nutritional content of its leaves (and flowers and buds in other forms).
Spinach and lettuce on the other hand are annual plants, that survive just one year. Because they have to accomplish all growth quickly, they don’t have time to toughen up their leaves like perennials do.
As mentioned above, grasses have evolved a high silica content in their leaves that makes them highly abrasive and difficult to eat. In fact, most ruminants, such as most deer, can’t eat grasses. It’s only specialized grazers like horses and cows that can cope with chewing grasses with specialized teeth.
Most plants are herbivore-proof to some degree. (At least their leaves and stems are; fruits have evolved in order to be eaten by animals to spread the seeds.) Different herbivores have evolved various strategies to overcome plant defenses, as in the case of specialized teeth of grazers.
The easiest way for a plant to defend its leaves is to make them tough by adding cellulose and lignin. But they can’t toughen up leaves while they are still growing, before they reach their maximum size. That’s why many browsers like deer only eat young leaves, buds, growing tips, or fast-growing annual herbs.
Besides toughness, many plants protect their leaves with toxic chemicals. Again, specialized herbivores evolve that are able to neutralize these toxins and eat the leaves anyway. Deer eat many toxic plants, but only eat a small amount of each kind in order to avoid consuming too many toxins.
If you look around a forest, it seems there is an enormous amount of food available for herbivores. But that’s not the case. Only a small amount plant matter is actually available to herbivores, either because of an unfavorable ratio of nutrients, or because it is full of toxins.
Human domestication of crops usually involves enhancing the nutritional content of the plant part we eat, and in some cases reducing the amounts of toxins present.
I super appreciate the detailed, thoughtful answer. I learned a lot in a few short paragraphs. Thank you!
Hey now isn’t corn a type of grass.
Yes, maize (corn is ambiguous; use either maize or wheat to avoid confusion) is a type of grass. And like other grasses that we eat (e.g. millet and barley), we eat only the seeds.
I don’t know if eating grass is bad for you, except that you can’t digest cellulose, as noted.
In One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch, Solzhenitsyn wrote:
I would’ve said that the Gulag authorities were feeding them boiled grass (actually something called megara, I gather) to give them something to fill them up, even if it wasn’t nourishing. But Solzhenitsyn says it wasn’t even good for that.
As far as I can make out, he is referring to sorghum porridge. Like other porridges, it’s made out of the boiled grains, not the leaves (as indicated by saying that it “looked like millet.”) Like other cereals, sorghum is a kind of grass. It’s nutritious enough.
But Solzhenitsyn was a notorious whiner. 
He even complained about being given traditional Russian fish head soup!
Why would you say it was sorghum? Nothing Solzhenitsyn writes suggests that directly.
In the film they made of the book, the concoction is a greenish-yellow doughy mass, but I don’t know how accurate that was. They explicitly said it was “made from boiled grass” in the film, and repeated the claim (from the book) that the Gulag authorities got the idea of feeding the prisoners boiled grass from the Chinese. That seems a weird way to describe porridge.
Why would you think I didn’t do some research before posting that? While it’s not indicated to be sorghum specifically, Solzhenitsyn’s entire description indicates that the porridge was made of grain, not grass leaves.
From here
Although this is not a first hand cite, it appears the author knows what he is talking about, and everything he states is consistent with other information. In particular, Solzhenitsyn specifically says they got the idea of using it from the Chinese.
I’ve seen the film, which is regarded as one of the most faithful adaptations of a book ever made. I think that if it were intended to be boiled grass leaves they probably would have depicted it as such. (I particularly remember the scene of Ivan finding a fish eye in his soup.)
I think you are being misled by the fact that “grass” in English is used mainly to refer to just the leaves, not other parts of the plant. I don’t know what word Solzhentisyn used in Russian, or its connotations, so I don’t know if this was from the original, or a translator. But everything in the description indicates that it was indeed some kind of starchy mass made from grains, not a loose broth of boiled grass leaves. It is described as “porridge,” “a solid lump,” “looked like millet,” and that “a bowl of it weighed nearly a pound.” None of this is consistent with a broth made of boiled grass leaves. So I would assume that by “grass” they were referring to the plant (and sorghum is a grass) and they boiled the grains, rather than the leaves. I don’t know if Solzhenitsyn was trying to make it sound even more distasteful by referring to it as “boiled grass,” or if this was just a translator’s error.
A very complete response, and i thank you for it. But your quotations mainly come from elsewhere, not from Solzhenitsyn. Going by what’s in the book (which I’ve read several times) and by the film, I still got the impression that it was some sort of grass, not a food grain.
My quotations of the description of the food come directly from Solzhenitsyn:
Bolding mine.
You are focusing on the connotation of the English word “grass,” and ignoring everything else about the Solzhenitsyn’s description (and as I said, sorghum is a grass). Everything about his description indicates it is a starchy food made from grain, not from boiled grass leaves. The reason I investigated the matter further was because Solzhenitsyn’s description didn’t match that of boiled grass leaves.
Now, my identification of the grain as specifically being sorghum come from the other source I quoted, but the fact that it was some kind of grain instead of just grass leaves is based on the way Solzhenitsyn describes it.
According to the folks at the Wilderness Awareness School, lawn-type grasses can be used, at least as a survival food.
"More than 400 types of grasses can be eaten worldwide. Grasses are known for being edible and healthy eating because of their proteins and chlorophyll. Magnesium, phosphorus, iron, calcium, potassium and zinc are commonly found in grasses. Grasses show up in your every-day foods, too. Cereal grains are in the grass family, including wheat, rice, wild rice, corn, oats, barely, millet and rye. The seeds are usually the most beneficial part of the grasses and nearly all grasses are edible. However, in a survival situation, just because grasses are edible doesn’t mean it is worth the caloric output it would take to harvest many small seeds. Harvesting grasses can be done by hand, collecting them in a container for later use. Sprouted grass seeds can be a good food source as well.
Edible grasses include: bent, wheat, slough, brome, crab, switch, canary, timothy, blue and bristle grasses. You can make grasses into a juice by grinding them up, but don’t swallow the fiber. Chewing immature seed heads can be beneficial as well."
Supposedly you can dry some of these same grasses and add them to flour for bulk stomach-filling purposes.
Earlier this year when the Covid thing first hit, I was considering harvesting a bunch of wild violets which make up a sizable percentage of our lawn, in case the food supply was cut off (cooked, violets taste somewhat like spinach). Other lawn “weeds” (i.e. purslane, chickweed, lamb’s quarters and dandelions) are edible as well.
True; and they’re often more nutritious than greens that we’re more used to eating.
However, watch out for two things: for one, be sure you can recognize which weeds are edible, because not all of them are, and some can be poisonous. (Some are also only good to eat if cooked properly, she says, remembering the Milkweed Incident.) And for two: make sure the lawn hasn’t been treated with pesticides (a term which includes fungicides and herbicides as well as insecticides). Pesticides meant for use on lawns are approved under the assumption that nobody’s going to be eating the stuff.
but again, they talk mostly about the seeds, which we eat plenty of already. Maize, wheat, barley, rice, etc. are all grasses but we only get any food energy (calories) from the seeds. We’re not ruminants, we cannot survive on the actual leaves/blades of grass like, say, cows can. It’s also worth noting that grass (leaves/blades) eating animals like cows spend basically every waking hour eating.