On the distinctions of plants

On Oats. Chapter 27.

The Germans' staple food.

A woodcut illustration depicts an oat plant (Avena sativa) with its characteristic drooping panicles. At the base of the plant, three geese are shown on a small patch of grass, likely signifying the plant's use as animal fodder.

On some islands, the inhabitants must live on oats alone, where it grows even without any labor from the farmers. Pliny writes in his fourth and eighteenth books, chapter 30, that the Germans have no other pottage in their kitchens but oat flour. This may perhaps be true in the Allgäu and Thurgau regions; otherwise, oats are a fodder for travel horses in the German lands. It is primarily for the sake of these horses that oats are now mostly cultivated. Yet, oats are certainly not a lowly or contemptible fruit for either livestock or people, including both the sick and the healthy. For as soon as the doctor or physician establishes the order and dietary regime for the sick patient in the kitchen, oats, with their kernel and flour, are not the least among the cooked dishes. This is not without reason, as oats have been found to be as useful for food as they are for treating illness. In past years, when there was a great famine, the inhabitants of the Wasgau the Vosges region and Westerich a historical region in the Rhineland-Palatinate learned to bake bread from oats, and they found it useful and good tasting. As a result of this experience, oats have subsequently become more expensive and valued. Who would want to do without oats in the land now? I speak here of the domestic variety, for in the writings of the ancients, one finds two kinds: the domestic and the wild.

Pliny book 18, chapter 29.

Oat bread in the Wasgau during the famine.

1.

labe.

The domestic variety, of which we write here, is similar to wheat in its sprouts, grass, stalks, and nodes, as Dioscorides testifies in book 2, chapter 85. The ears also emerge from the grassy sheaths and spread apart like the plume or ears on a reed. The pointed seed of the oats hangs freely between the opened hulls or wings of the ear, always two kernels next to each other like twins. Yet, one of these is always larger than the other. Both have long awns the hair-like bristles on the grain spreading out, and with the wings open, they look like grasshoppers. This fruit is usually among the last in the field, for it is also harvested toward the end original: "Glen", likely referring to the late summer or harvest period