--- title: "How many blades of grass are there in the world? very roughly " description: "very roughly 2 quintillion How the figure is estimated, how confident it is, and what makes the scale graspable." url: https://atoneplace.net/how-many/blades-of-grass/ site: "At One Place" --- # How many blades of grass are there in the world? **How many blades of grass are there in the world?: very roughly 2 quintillion** On these assumptions there are roughly a hundred times more blades of grass on Earth than there are grains of sand on its beaches. No one has estimated this seriously, so what follows is arithmetic with honest error bars of a factor of ten. Grassland covers roughly 40 million square kilometres, about a quarter of the land surface. A dense managed lawn carries on the order of 50,000 to 100,000 blades per square metre; wild steppe and savanna are far sparser, perhaps a few thousand. Take 50,000 per square metre as a generous average and you land near 2 × 10^18. ## How the figure is arrived at Count blades in a small measured quadrat — a 10 cm square is enough — scale to a square metre, then multiply by global grassland area. The whole answer hinges on the density figure, and lawn density is five to twenty times natural grassland density, so quoting a lawn number as a global average inflates the result by an order of magnitude. ## How confident it is - **Low estimate:** 200,000,000,000,000,000 - **High estimate:** 20,000,000,000,000,000,000 - **Spread:** 100.0× between the bounds > Presented as a worked estimate rather than a finding. Anyone quoting a precise figure for this has multiplied two guesses together and rounded the result badly. ## Other living things and the natural world counts - [How many people are there in the world?](https://atoneplace.net/how-many/people-alive-right-now/) — about 8.2 billion - [How many grains of sand are there on Earth?](https://atoneplace.net/how-many/grains-of-sand-on-earth/) — roughly 7.5 quintillion on the world's beaches - [How many ants are there in the world?](https://atoneplace.net/how-many/ants-on-earth/) — about 20 quadrillion - [How many trees are there in the world?](https://atoneplace.net/how-many/trees-on-earth/) — about 3 trillion - [How many insects are there?](https://atoneplace.net/how-many/insects-on-earth/) — about 10 quintillion - [How many species are there?](https://atoneplace.net/how-many/species-on-earth/) — about 8.7 million - [How many people have ever lived?](https://atoneplace.net/how-many/people-who-have-ever-lived/) — about 117 billion - [How many drops of water are there in the ocean?](https://atoneplace.net/how-many/drops-of-water-in-the-ocean/) — about 27 septillion - [How many fish are there in the sea?](https://atoneplace.net/how-many/fish-in-the-sea/) — somewhere between 3 trillion and 100 trillion — nobody knows - [How many species are endangered?](https://atoneplace.net/how-many/endangered-species/) — more than 45,000 assessed as threatened - [How many bees are there in the world?](https://atoneplace.net/how-many/bees-in-the-world/) — roughly 2 trillion managed honey bees - [How many birds are there in the world?](https://atoneplace.net/how-many/birds-in-the-world/) — about 50 billion wild birds - [How many bacteria are there on Earth?](https://atoneplace.net/how-many/bacteria-on-earth/) — about 5 nonillion - [How many earthquakes are there each year?](https://atoneplace.net/how-many/earthquakes-a-year/) — about 20,000 located a year — around 55 a day ## Common questions ### How many blades of grass are there in the world? very roughly 2 quintillion ### How is that estimated? Count blades in a small measured quadrat — a 10 cm square is enough — scale to a square metre, then multiply by global grassland area. The whole answer hinges on the density figure, and lawn density is five to twenty times natural grassland density, so quoting a lawn number as a global average inflates the result by an order of magnitude. ## Related pages - [How many people are there in the world?](https://atoneplace.net/how-many/people-alive-right-now/) - [How many grains of sand are there on Earth?](https://atoneplace.net/how-many/grains-of-sand-on-earth/) - [How many ants are there in the world?](https://atoneplace.net/how-many/ants-on-earth/) - [How many trees are there in the world?](https://atoneplace.net/how-many/trees-on-earth/) - [How many insects are there?](https://atoneplace.net/how-many/insects-on-earth/) - [How many species are there?](https://atoneplace.net/how-many/species-on-earth/) - [How many people have ever lived?](https://atoneplace.net/how-many/people-who-have-ever-lived/) - [How many drops of water are there in the ocean?](https://atoneplace.net/how-many/drops-of-water-in-the-ocean/) - [How many stars are there in the universe?](https://atoneplace.net/how-many/stars-in-the-universe/) - [How many countries are there in the world?](https://atoneplace.net/how-many/countries/) - [How many bones are in the human body?](https://atoneplace.net/how-many/bones-in-the-human-body/) - [How many stars are there in the Milky Way?](https://atoneplace.net/how-many/stars-in-the-milky-way/) - [How many atoms are there in the universe?](https://atoneplace.net/how-many/atoms-in-the-universe/) - [How many galaxies are there?](https://atoneplace.net/how-many/galaxies-in-the-universe/) ## Sources - Calculated on this page — At One Place (/about/)