Grass Block

Grass is a block that was introduced in the game very early. It uses 3 textures, a grey one for the top which is then tinted to the correct colour according to what biome the block is in, one borrowed from the Dirt block for bottom and a edited Dirt texture with grass on the top edge on all the sides. Grass appears on the topmost blocks of the dirt layer of a natural map.

In order for Grass to grow it needs to be next to another block of Grass and be exposed to light. The number of Grass blocks in contact with a block of dirt will affect the speed at which the block will grow Grass. In mining, Grass behaves just like Dirt as it drops Dirt resources and is best dug with a shovel; however, it makes a different sound when harvested. This can be used to tell when the player is about to break the surface when tunneling upwards.

Uses

 * Passive mobs spawn on lit grass; therefore, one can create a farm that will spawn animals using grass, or exclude passive mobs from an area by ensuring there is no grass.
 * Tilling Grass with a Hoe will occasionally drop Seeds as well as converting it into Field, whereas Dirt never drops seeds.
 * Grass can be used to make lawns, gardens or as a shade of green in Pixel Art that is on the ground.

History
Attempting to place Grass blocks by means of hacking one's inventory in Classic Creative Multiplayer will cause the server to automatically kick the player. Due to current Creative mode's lack of dynamic lighting, Grass that is in shadow will eventually die and change to Dirt. Grass in inventory used to have a green colour in all sides of the block.

Trivia

 * Grass and dirt changing between each other is a common cause of chunk updates.
 * Grass is one of the first seen blocks made in Minecraft, seen here. It had the top most face on all sides, resulting in "grass cubes".
 * A grass block has become the favicon for Minecraft.net and the icon for Minecraft.exe and Minecraft.app.
 * In Indev, placable grass blocks were stored in chests for a short time, and when placed, no matter where, the grass would never die. The only way to kill the grass was to mine the block.
 * In Survival Test mode, Sheep would eat Grass to regrow Cloth on their bodies, reverting it to Dirt. Often, the Grass would regrow just as quickly as Sheep would eat it.
 * After the Halloween Update the resource has a weird texture when obtained in the inventory using an Inventory Editor or the /give command but will look normal when placed. This is because grass color is set by each biome instead of remaining constant throughout the map.

Gras