structural:summarization
Growth and development

Grass blades grow at the base of the blade and not from elongated stem tips. This low growth point evolved in response to grazing animals and allows grasses to be grazed or mown regularly without severe damage to the plant.

Three general classifications of growth habit present in grasses: bunch-type (also called caespitose), stoloniferous, and rhizomatous. The success of the grasses lies in part in their morphology and growth processes and in part in their physiological diversity. There are both C3 and C4 grasses, referring to the photosynthetic pathway for carbon fixation. The C4 grasses have a photosynthetic pathway, linked to specialized Kranz leaf anatomy, which allows for increased water use efficiency, rendering them better adapted to hot, arid environments.

The C3 grasses are referred to as "cool-season" grasses, while the C4 plants are considered "warm-season" grasses.

Although the C4 species are all in the PACMAD clade (see diagram below), it seems that various forms of C4 have arisen some twenty or more times, in various subfamilies or genera. In the Aristida genus for example, one species (A. longifolia) is C3 but the approximately 300 other species are C4. As another example, the whole tribe of Andropogoneae, which includes maize, sorghum, sugar cane, " Job's tears ", and bluestem grasses, is C4. Around 46 percent of grass species are C4 plants.