Wild Oats

Family: Grass (Poaceae syn. Gramineae)

Scientific Name:

Avena fatua

Wild Oats flower-heads
Photo: A J Brown

Other Common Names:

Wild Oat

Status:

Native to southern Europe but naturalised throughout Australia.

Plant Description:

Tufted annual grass to 150 cm high with hairless leaves to 45 cm long and 15 mm wide. Flower-heads are open and spreading panicles, 40 cm long and 20 cm wide. Spikelets are drooping, 18-25 mm long (excluding awns). Each spikelet has 2-3 florets, then lower being 14-20 mm long. Each floret is sparely silky hairy in the lower half, has 2-4 1 mm long teeth at its apex and a slender, strongly bent, black awn arising from its mid-back region. Florets fall separately from the spikelet, when mature.

Habitat:

Widespread across most of Victoria, although only scattered in the Alps. A common weed of cereal crops, pastures, roadsides and waste places, including the margins of swamps, lakes and streams.

Region	Salinity Class	Waterlogging Class
Mallee, Loddon Murray, Central and Northern, Wimmera	S0, *S1	W0, W1, W2
Western, Gippsland	S0, S1, S2	W0, W1, W2

*may be found on or fringing saline sites during the wetter parts of the year

Comments:

Other Oat species growing in Victoria with which Wild Oats may be confused include Cultivated Oats (Avena sativa) with its hairless and awnless (or shortly awned to 20 mm) florets and Bearded Oats (Avena barbata) with its densely hairy florets and florets that terminate in two fine bristles 3-12 mm long in addition to its awn.

Photos of Wild Oats

Wild Oats spikelets Photo: A J Brown	Stem and node of Wild Oats Photo: A J Brown
Wild Oats ligule at junction of leaf and stem Photo: A J Brown

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