on the gravel bar
each rocket is approx 6" long
(edit: my wild imagination remembered it being much larger then it really is approx 3" )

Wild Oats - Avena fatua

Thank you Daisy
had not seen them before this year
have been walking the gravel bar twice a day for 15 years

Someone brought you a gift. Its an annual but will reseed freely. If you have dogs, these are also called foxtails and can be pretty dangerous if they burrow into any doggy parts (ears, noses, other parts. Oops!).

The red and green is rather attractive! Six inches is pretty big, could this actually be Avena sterilis?

Avena sterilis:
http://www.giorgioventurini.ne...

Also some comparisons with other oats from Califlora:
https://www.calflora.org/cgi-b...

wow Sue
how would one find out which one it is
you are correct it is attractive is why it caught my eye
and big
Califlora says none of them are native

It's difficult to ID without a specimen and not being an expert - apparently oats can be hard to differentiate. I had wondered from the red and green appearance if it was a specific ornamental grass but I couldn't find anything quite like it in my two books on the subject. Maybe you could try Califlora, they have a plant ID facility also:

https://www.calflora.org/entry...

Graminologists would ask you to describe the stipules on the leaf blades, and other arcana of grass identification...

close up



leaf attachment

It's a really interesting plant, if you do get an ID and it's not here I hope you will post back what it is. I went through several references the other day and there were even some "non-oat" grasses that were somewhat similar. As John said, identifying grasses is complex, you have to look at the auricles, the ligule, whether the emerging blades are rolled or flat and so forth. When I looked at differentiating between Avena species there were some minutiae that I was not familiar with, so unless this is really obvious to someone here I think your best bet would be to find a more specialized entity. Just out of interest, do you have a picture of the whole plant, how tall is it?

the tallest are approx 5ft high
the smallest ones have more red color in them

Sue @sooby called my attention to this because of my agristology education but this is outside the range of my experience.

It may be hard to pin down unless Dick @Strever can find a local who is familiar with it. Especially if it's a cultivated selection, it could fall outside the descriptions found in keys to the overall species and their descriptions. It's very much like the situation with the Lolium in Illinois in that thread.

Pat