Algerian oat

Avena byzantina (Poaceae), the red or Algerian oat, is a robust annual cereal grass closely related to common oat and now generally treated as a subspecies or cultivar group of Avena sativa. It originated in the Mediterranean basin, particularly North Africa and the Near East, and is grown today as a grain and forage crop in warm-temperate climates worldwide. Plants form tufts of erect culms 60 to 150 centimetres tall, with broad, flat, slightly glaucous leaf blades and a short, blunt, membranous ligule. The inflorescence is an open, pyramidal panicle of pendulous, two- to three-flowered spikelets; lemmas are reddish or reddish-brown at maturity (whence the common name), typically awnless or with a weakly bent awn, and the rachilla disarticulates only when threshed, distinguishing it from wild Avena species. The grain is a typical hairy caryopsis enclosed in adherent hull and lemma, used as cereal, oat straw, and stock feed.