Oat (Avena sativa)

Avena sativa, commonly called the oat, is a tall cereal grass of the family Poaceae that can reach nearly two meters in height and was formally named by Carl Linnaeus in 1753. Its wild ancestor is thought to be Avena sterilis, a hexaploid species from the Fertile Crescent, and oats are believed to have begun as a weed growing among cultivated wheat fields before becoming a deliberate crop in Europe around three thousand years ago. The plant tolerates cold winters less well than wheat, barley or rye but needs less summer heat and more rain, making it especially well suited to the cool, wet climate of Northwest Europe, and its dense growth habit lets it outcompete weeds without herbicides. Oats are consumed by people chiefly as oatmeal and rolled oats, used widely as livestock feed, and grown as a cover crop or green manure, with Canada and Russia today dominating a global production that is mostly consumed domestically rather than traded.