Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun A broad-leaved herb other than a grass, especially one growing in a field, prairie, or meadow.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun Any non-woody
flowering plant that is not agrass .
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
Support
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Examples
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• A "forb" is a wildflower that grows without human involvement.
unknown title 2009
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For example, not everyone knows that a "forb" is a wildflower.
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I don't know the name of this flower - looks like a forb - or species of fly visiting this tall wild flower I found in an open-field in Groningen, the Netherlands.
Pollinators make the world go round (Travelog Europe) DNLee 2009
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While sand sagebrush and prairie grasses such as sand dropseed, sand bluestem, and big sandreed may create a continuous plant cover in portions of Ecoregion 25j, the shrub and forb cover may be sparse in dune areas.
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I don't know the name of this flower - looks like a forb - or species of fly visiting this tall wild flower I found in an open-field in Groningen, the Netherlands.
Archive 2009-09-01 DNLee 2009
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I would suggest that any tall forb that enjoys the prairie life style would be a natural for your fans.
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In the tall-grass prairie of Iowa, for example, typical grasses are big bluestem and little bluestem; a typical forb is black-eyed Susan.
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Today Douglas-fir and ponderosa pine are common, along with lodgepole pine and some aspen parkland with a sagebrush and forb understory.
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Placement of high densities of ungulates on a grassland clearly removes poaceae and other forb biomass at a rapid rate.
Overgrazing 2009
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This class of European grasslands often include considerable hectarage that have been partially cultivated by humans, are which are, in fact, effective refugia for grass and forb taxa that might otherwise have become extinct.
yarb commented on the word forb
Best word I've discovered in some time.
January 16, 2008
sionnach commented on the word forb
You get a bunch of them together and before you know it it's all classic Harleys and Faberge eggs and quixotic flat-tax presidential bids.
January 16, 2008
treeseed commented on the word forb
Forbs are herbaceous flowering plants that are not graminoids (grasses, sedges and rushes). The term is frequently used in vegetation ecology, especially in relation to grasslands, to refer to broad-leaved (dicot) herbs. Forbs represent a guild of plant species with broadly similar growth form, which in ecology is often more important than taxonomic relationship.
In addition to its use in ecological studies, the term forb may also be used for subdividing popular guides to the wildflowers of a region, together with other categories such as ferns, grasses, shrubs and trees. This approach is not followed in formal regional floras, which are usually organised taxonomically.
_Wikipedia
February 12, 2008