Straw is an agricultural by-product used for animal bedding, thatching, packing, fuel, and sometimes rough fodder. Its pale colour, dryness, rustle, and lightness make it a familiar material in rural imagery. In poetry, straw may suggest poverty, humility, harvest remains, fragility, or practical resourcefulness. A straw bed evokes simple or harsh living, while the proverbial final straw represents a small burden that causes collapse. Nativity scenes also connect straw with sacredness arising in the humblest surroundings.

Straw is the dry stalk left after cereal grain has been removed, whereas hay is dried grass cut mainly for fodder. Straw is used for bedding, thatching, packing, mulch, and sometimes rough feed. In poetry, it may suggest harvest remains, poverty, fragility, humility, or practical resourcefulness. Nativity imagery gives it sacred associations. Related terms include wheat, barley, threshing, chaff, bedding, thatch, hay, stubble, and sheaf.