In recent publications, the same combinatorial description has arisen for three separate objects of interest: non-negative cells in the real grassmannian (Postnikov, Williams); torus orbits of symplectic leaves in the classical grassmannian (Brown, Goodearl and Yakimov); and torus invariant prime ideals in the quantum grassmannian (Lenagan, Rigal and I). The aim of this talk is to present these results and explore the reasons for this coincidence.