Oat

The oat, sometimes called the common oat, is a species of cereal grass grown for fodder and for its seed, itself usually called oats in the plural; it appears to have been domesticated as a secondary crop, its seeds resembling those of other cereals closely enough to have been included unintentionally by early cultivators of wheat and barley. Oats tolerate cold winters less well than wheat, barley or rye but need less summer heat and more rain, making them important in areas such as Northwest Europe with cool, wet summers, and they can tolerate low-nutrient, acidic soils; growing thickly and vigorously, they outcompete many weeds and are relatively free of disease compared with other cereals. Oats are consumed by humans as oatmeal, including as steel-cut or rolled oats, with global production dominated by Canada and Russia.