How do fields of grass just reach a certain length and stop growing? No one is mowing these wild fields.
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If you put a thin straw in a water-basin, the water would rise in the straw higher than the waterlevel of the basin. The thiner the straw, the higher the water could rise.
Since the “straw” needs to be thinner and thiner to get the water higher and higher, there is a point of diminishing returns, where the amount of water you can get through the straw is miniscule due to the small radius of the straw.
Plants use this hydrostatic flow to transport water and, with the water, nutrients / macromolecules from the ground up to the stoma in the leaves. Additional you have root pressure from the roots and a transpirational pull from the water evaporation in the stoma.
But a grass plant can’t get water as high as a tree with e.g. more leaves = more evaporation preasure.
I believe there are even more factors, but I can’t remember. Maybe the cells that make up the “straw” or tunnel (xylem) are different in grass and bigger plants. But I’m not sure.
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