Common wild oat, Avena loca

This oat is native to Eurasia. It is a typical oat in appearance, a green grass with hollow, erect stems 1 to 4 feet tall bearing nodding panicles of spikelets. The long dark green leaves are up to a centimeter wide and rough due to small hairs. The seedlings are also hairy. This and other wild oats can become troublesome in prairie agriculture when it invades and lowers the quality of a field crop. It takes very few wild oat plants to cause a significant reduction in the yield of a wheat or cultivated oat field, even though the seeds are a type of oat.