A forb is a flowering plant with a non-woody stem that is not a grass. Since it is non-woody, it is not a shrub or tree either. Thus most wild and garden flowers, herbs and vegetables are forbs. Classes Magnoliopsida - Dicots Liliopsida - Monocots The flowering plants or angiosperms are the most widespread group of land plants. ... Cut grass growing on in the Hudson River Park Tall grass growing wild at Lyme Park Grass covered house in Iceland. ... A broom shrub in flower A shrub or bush is a horticultural rather than strictly botanical category of woody plant, distinguished from a tree by its multiple stems and lower height, usually less than 6 m tall. ... The coniferous Coast Redwood, the tallest tree species on earth. ... A gardener Gardening is the practice of growing flowering plants, vegetables, and fruits. ... Herbs: basil Herbs (IPA: hə()b, or əb; see pronunciation differences) are seed-bearing plants without woody stems, which die down to the ground after flowering. ... A plate of vegetables Vegetable is a culinary term which generally refers to an edible part of a plant. ...

Forbs do not form a coherent taxonomic group: there are many families and even genera of plants that include forbs along with shrubs or even trees. However the category is useful, and widely used, in two contexts: Look up taxonomy in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... The hierarchy of scientific classification In biological classification, family (Latin: familia, plural familiae) is a rank, or a taxon in that rank. ... For other uses, see Genus (disambiguation). ...

• In describing plants for non-specialist purposes, the most useful initial way of breaking down a list is into grasses, forbs, shrubs and trees, because this tells us what basic kind of plant we are looking at. This is the usual way that guides to the plants of a region are organised; see, for example, Wikipedia's List of San Francisco Bay Area wildflowers
• In ecology, the way a plant grows may be more important than the taxon it belongs to. For example, a grazing herbivore is likely to be able to eat a wide range of grasses and forbs, but not to take shrubs or trees even if they belong to the same families. Similarly, in fire ecology, forbs regardless of taxon will pose one kind of danger, and trees a different kind.