OATS. Arena saliva, Linn. Graminece. Figs. 715 721, also Fig. 542.
By A. L. Stone.
A grass grown for its grain, which is used both for human food and for stock, and also for its straw. It is the only species of the genus that is of great agricultural importance. Arena fatua, the wild oat (Fig. 543), from which the domestic oat may have sprung, is a serious pest in many parts of the world.
The flowers of the oat are borne in a panicle which consists of a central rachis or flower-stem from which small branches extend in various direc tions. The panicles are nine to twelve inches in length, and the branches are arranged in whorls at intervals along the flower-stem. There are usu ally three to five or more whorls, which bear sixty to eighty florets, or spikelets. (Fig. 715.) Each one of these spikelets is composed of two or more flowers, but it is seldom that more than two of them mature, and of these one grain is invari ably larger than the other. In many varieties but a single grain reaches full size and the oats are called "single" oats; in others two grains mature, and the oats are called "twin" oats. The flower itself is placed in two outer, light, netted-veined glumes which enclose the flowering glume and palea. When there are two flowers on the pedicel, the flowering glume of the lower flower generally encloses that of the upper flower to a greater or less degree. Within the flowering glume and palea are the organs of reproduction. which consist of three filaments and anthers, closely set about an ovary bearing two feathery stigmas. These stig mas surmount the ovary and spread out as the flower ex pands. The filaments bearing the anthers grow very rapidly and push themselves outside the palea. The anthers are so arranged that the growth of the filaments changes their po sition enough to subvert them and allow the pollen to fall on the stigmas. The flowers bloom in morning or afternoon.
Distribution and yield.
The exact nativity of the oat plant is not posi tively known, but the evidence would indicate it to be Tartary in western Asia, or possibly eastern Europe. No record of it has been found in the
literature of China, India or other parts of southern Asia. Neither is it mentioned prominently in the early histories of Asia or the Holy Land. Certainly it has never been of such importance to the human race as wheat, corn or rye, all of which figured largely in the early nurture of the race.
The great oat-producing regions of the world lie almost wholly within the north temperate zone and include Russia, Norway and Sweden, Germany, Canada and the north-central part of the United States. Large quantities of the grain of very good quality are grown in Australia and the neigh boring islands, and more recently limited quantities have been grown in Africa and South America, hut the great bulk of any season's crop is produced in the first mentioned territory.
Russia and its provinces, Poland and Northern Caucasia, produce the greatest quantity of oats of any country in Europe or America, or in fact the world. Of the more than two billion bushels pro duced in Europe in 1904, Russia furnished 1,065, 088,000 bushels. The oats grown there are high grade and many of the most valuable varieties now being grown in America are importations from Russia, largely from the southwestern provinces.
The following tables from the 1904 Yearbook of the United States Department of Agriculture, giv ing the yields of the various grains in the principal regions where each is grown, will give some idea of the comparative importance of the oat crop: It will be seen that in the number of bushels oats exceeds both corn and wheat ; but it is really less than either when the total number of pounds is considered. The average annual yield of oats foi the world at large from 1900-1904, inclusive, ha: been 3,499,866,000 bushels. While the yield pm acre is high, the value per acre is less than that of any other of our common grains.