the.com/prairie
the flat-looking horizon hiding the planet's tallest plants underground, roots diving deeper than oaks grow up
means A large, mostly flat expanse of grassland with few trees, typical of central North America.
from Straight from French prairie, 'meadow,' which grew out of Latin pratum, 'a meadow.' French explorers and trappers crossing the continent's vast grass seas had no English word grand enough for them, so they reached for the homey word for a meadow — and it stuck, ballooning from a tidy field into an ocean of grass.
- root depth
- Some prairie grass roots reach 15 feet down
- vanished biome
- Over 96% of tallgrass prairie is gone
- fire-fed
- It needs burning to survive and thrive
- carbon vault
- Stores more carbon below ground than rainforests
- bison engineers
- Grazing herds once shaped its entire ecosystem
for instance
flint hills — 1.4 million acres of prairie grassland spanning kansas, oklahoma, and missouri