Sow your wild oats!

Sew your wild oats!

ShannonE.Hardie

Wild Oates, or taxonomically named Avena Fatua, is a grass grain that can be found on each continent.  http://www.ars-grin.gov Wild Oates have been found in ancient Egyptian tombs and have been known to have been used as food and bedding in the least as of 2000 years ago. Wild Oat seeds have also been found in caves of Northern Europe. The vastest density of Wild Oats strains is found in Asia Minor where it is believed that the location with the most varieties of a given species is the place of origin of that researched species. The Wild Oat seed (Avena Fatua) is cited as the origin of the Common Oat seed (Avena Sativa).  http;//www.agron.iastate.edu

Oats were brought to North America through the Elizabeth Islands, Massachusetts in 1602.  Incidentally Wild Oats have been used as a "feed grain" for chicken and horses and humans for over two millenniums. Grazing animals are continued to be fed on the wild oat grass. http://www.britannica.com  Similarly, native peoples continue to apply wild oats to their food sources as the Cahuilla, Diegueno, Kawaiisu, Luiseno( Food Staple), Mendocino Indian (Food Staple), Pomo ( Food Staple) peoples use them as culinary basics. http://herb.umd.umich.edu

Today wild oats are considered a weed to grain growers.  Wild oats can hibernate for up to ten years in the soil before growing above. http://www.agf.gov.bc.ca Above the grain lines of a farmer’s field of Avena Sativa or Common Oats, the Wild Oat can be seen growing up to 4 feet high. http://www.calflora.org It is a flowering plant from June to July, and reproduces with seeds from August to October. The Avena Fatua flower has hermaphrodite organs that are pollinated by wind or animal.  The plant prefers light, medium and heavy soils (sandy, loamy and clay soils). The plant can grow in very acid soil. . Wild Oats tolerate a pH in the range 4.5 to 6.5. http://www.ibiblio.org Wild Oats can also tolerate drought. http://www.gov.pe.ca Wild Oats blossoms in full sun and tolerates an elevation of 82 to 4002 feet. http://www.ibiblio.org  http://www.calflora.org, http://www.gov.pe.ca  The seed’s awn opening and closing in the changing humidities creates a twisting action that burrows the seed into the ground.  The majority of wild oat seeds will germinate in the same year they were produced.

The seedling of the Wild Oat has a leaf twist and has hairs on the leaf margins. The spikelets customarily contain up to 7 florets. The plant may produce up to 250 black, brown, grey, yellow, or white seeds. The seeds are hairy on the ventral side and carry a circular scar where attached.   http://www.calflora.org  The florets of Avena Fatua are heart shaped  Http://www.ipm.ucdavis.edu and the plant is known as nodding.  http://herbarium.usu.edu The roots of Avena Fatua are fibrous with a straight hollow stem and dark nodes http://www.gov.ns.ca Avena Fatua is in the group Monocot and the family Poaceae and is a Graminoid in its growth.  http://plants.usda.gov Avena Fatua is a vascular flowering seed grass plant also known as Flaxgrass, Oatgrass, and Wheat Oats http://plants.usda.gov

In the prairies of Canada Wild Oats are considered an invasive predator of a grass weed. There is a registration of financing that records losses as high as $500 million annually in grass grain farm lands due to Wild Oats (http://www.gov.mb.ca) Wild Oats have been recorded as having immunity to herbicides and tolerance of pesticides. It is a strong plant that survives as the fittest and naturally selected http://plants.usda.gov   Barley and Canola compete with Wild Oats however it is difficult for Wheat and harder still for Oats and Flax. http://plants.usda.gov  There have been movements towards the harvesting of Wild Oat seeds as a provider of fall sowing cereals. http://www.rothamsted.bbsrc.ac.uk The Wild Oat species could be of importance in the cultivation of Common Oats (A.Sativa) where the Wild Oat has drought tolerance, disease resistance and higher yields http://www.ibilio.org

To conserve this ancient species with its utility over the millenniums, organic farmers are known to not require a field of one species alone but consider the field as its own ecosystem with its richness and abundance providing for a dominant species. http://eap.mcgill.ca  In this way Wild Oats can be conserved while the farmers can liberally "sow their wild oats" at their own discression.  As a weed, Wild Oats are not without utility, it is the emergence of more abundant species of Oats in evolution that makes a preference to the younger adaptive Oats than the Wild Oats.

Conservation is to retain the mass of organisms that themselves maintain the ecosystems of the biosphere.  With the rate of development of humanity consuming as a need, a custom and a habit at an alarming rate of natural destruction, one is left advocating for the survival of these said ecosystems against the mechanisms of progress.   One such example is fallow fields or grazing pastures that feed horses and cattle with the Wild Oat species within those ecosystems.

We rely on ecosystems to provide O2 and to consume CO2 to lessen the dawning of the global warming crisis and to provide food substance to living organisms.  The communities of organisms within the natural systems of life and consumption webs are lessening due to the progress and developments of human survival provision and excess. 

The age and life span of some plantae species is far beyond that of the human or animalian species.  To respect one's elders, with intention to preserve the first forms of life through the means of protecting their ecosystems, is to provide one with a means to observe with an understanding of the ancient species and another benefit, to provide humanity, and its investigations into life and its compositions, a means to discovering details of the ancient world, thorough ethical experimentation, that could lead to human survival and furthermore, human adaptation or cure.  Such as the learned benefits of the Wild Oat which is immune and sustaining compared to other Oats or grasses which in itself could lead to a stronger grasses due to the symbiosis.

To realize that as humans there were at one point in history a dependence upon the ancient species, it is due to the symbiosis (or living together) of this relationship that humans exist today.  To have found alternate modes of dependence in the human developments, into modes of control over nature such as farming, one would be lead to believe that humans protect another species as a function or a use in human dependency as heterotrophs, however reject that which was the means to survival before discovery of greater control and ease was made or encountered. 

Respect for the journey that lead humanity to its place in space and time would be to advocate for the conservation of ancient species, such as Wild Oats, with appreciation for the journey of life that has existed for the majority of time on Earth without involvement of human interaction however within human interaction there was a subsistence to wild oats as primary producer.  The food stuffs of our ancestors should not be considered a weed.  I advocate for the preservation of this biospheric grain.

Comments

[coach sale]

Abundance is seeing people for their gifts and not what they lack or could be. Seeing all things for their gifts and not what they lack.

[pancreatic abscess]

Oats belong to the family of grasses, like the rest of foodgrains, one of the most important families for food and dry seeds whose fruits are rich in starch, a complex carbohydrate source of energy for our body.