Meadow

A meadow is an open habitat or field, vegetated by grasses, herbs, and other non-woody plants. Trees or shrubs may sparsely populate meadows, as long as these areas maintain an open character. Meadows can occur naturally under favourable conditions, but are often artificially created from cleared shrub or woodland for the production of hay, fodder, or livestock. Meadow habitats, as a group, are characterized as "semi-natural grasslands", meaning that they are largely composed of species native to the region, with only limited human intervention.

Quotes

• Ye have been fresh and green,
    Ye have been fill’d with flowers,
  And ye the walks have been
    Where maids have spent their hours.
  You have beheld how they
    With wicker arks did come
  To kiss and bear away
    The richer cowslips home.
  You’ve heard them sweetly sing,
    And seen them in a round:
  Each virgin like a spring,
    With honeysuckles crown’d.
  But now we see none here
    Whose silv’ry feet did tread
  And with dishevell’d hair
    Adorn’d this smoother mead.
  Like unthrifts, having spent
    Your stock and needy grown,
  You’re left here to lament
    Your poor estates, alone.
  • Robert Herrick, "To Meadows" in Hesperides (1648), no. 274
    • With st. 4 cp. Shakespeare, Venus and Adonis (1593), st. 24

• And what’s a life? The flourishing array
  Of the proud summer-meadow, which to-day
  Wears her green plush, and is to-morrow hay.
  • Francis Quarles, Emblems (1634), Book III, Emblem xiii