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Avena sativa

©University of Tennessee Herbarium, Knoxville

Vegetative Morphology

 
Plants annual or perennial.
Culms 8-200 cm, erect or decumbent.
Sheaths open.
Auricles absent.
Ligules membranous.
Blades usually flat, sometimes involute, lax.

Reproductive Morphology

 
Inflorescences panicles, diffuse, sometimes 1-sided.
Spikelets 15-50 mm, laterally compressed, with 1-6(8) florets.
Rachillas not prolonged beyond the uppermost floret.
Disarticulation above the glumes, usually also between the florets, or cultivated forms not disarticulating.
Glumes usually exceeding the florets, membranous, glabrous, 3-11-veined, acute.
Calluses rounded to pointed, with or without hairs.
Lemmas usually indurate and enclosing the caryopses at maturity, 5-9-veined, often with twisted, strigose hairs below midlength, apices dentate to bifid or biaristate, awned or unawned.
Awns (if present) dorsal, usually once-geniculate and strongly twisted in the basal portion.
Paleas bifid or entire, ciliate on the keels.
Lodicules 2, free, glabrous, toothed or not toothed.
Anthers 3.
Ovaries hairy.
Caryopses terete, ventrally grooved, pubescent.
Hila linear.

Species Distribution Maps

Avena barbata Avena fatua
Avena hybrida Avena occidentalis
Avena sativa Avena sterilis

Chromosome Number(s)

x = 7

Additional Notes

Name from the Latin avena, 'oats'.

Avena, a genus of 29 species, is native to temperate and cold regions of Europe, North Africa, and central Asia; it has become nearly cosmopolitan through the cultivation of cereal oats and the inadvertent introduction of the weedy species. Six species have been introduced into the Flora region.

Reports of Avena strigosa Schreb. from California are based on misidentifications. The specimens involved belong to Avena barbata.

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Name/Synonymy Publication Info

Avena L., Sp. pl. 1:79 (1753). LEC: Avena sativa L. [Nash in Britton & A. Br., Ill. fl. n. U.S., ed. 2, 1:218 (1913)].

Treatment from

B.R. Baum. Avena in Flora of North America, volume 24. In prep. Oxford University Press.

Fact Sheet Developed By

Pedro Oñativia Lake © 2006.