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 The ancients were not fond of oats. Among the most ancient - the Egyptians and Indians - he was not even listed in the lexicon. It seems that the Romans spoke about him for the first time. Approximately two centuries BC. They scolded in every way.
"You are weeding, try to pull out the oats!" - advised Cato. "If you see oats in the field, consider it a lost cause!" - Cicero echoed him later. The poet Virgil even wrote poems about this, which sounded something like this: "And the harvest deceived us with barren oats ..." Pliny the Elder, a famous Roman scientist, spoke most decisively in the first century: "The most important vice of bread is oats!" But why the vice and where did this annoying plant come from, how it turned out to be in the Roman fields, remained unclear.
A thousand years have passed. And a few more centuries. The 19th century has come. Already they ate oatmeal with might and main, and fed the horses, but there was no more information about oats. Many have tried to solve the oat problem. No less respectable men than Cato and Cicero. Glorious Karl Linnaeus. The most prominent biologist Jean Baptiste Lamarck. And the creator of plant geography A. Dekandol. No one was lucky. Only Academician N.I. Vavilov was honored to lift the veil of ignorance. The history of this event is as follows.
Persia, 1916. Academician Vavilov leads an expedition of botanists past Armenian villages. Their inhabitants moved here during the reign of Abbas the Great from Turkish Armenia and took with them their usual culture - spelled wheat. It has been sown for three centuries in a row, although no one else in Persia has grown it. Spelled is an atavism in agriculture. Anachronism. Dying out culture. Held only by the strength of tradition. Moreover, the taste and aroma of the bread that is baked. And especially porridge.
It was these scraps of meadows that intrigued the academician. In the midst of the ears of wheat, he noticed the gray panicles of oats. They are repeated in each field as a pattern, as an indispensable attribute. Oats - familiar from childhood "horse bread" - grows here not as a legal field crop, not as a respected grain plant, but as a weed, persecuted and despised. Like a thistle or wheatgrass.
At first it seemed to Vavilov that oats were the most common, sown oats. Looks closely - no, not quite the same. There are differences. And considerable. The panicle, like a mane, is beveled to one side. Short also. The scales with spikelets and flowers, on the contrary, are long, exorbitantly elongated. Only special, new forms.
Just a thought: the oats of the Armenian fields - an accidental whim of nature? The only phenomenon in the world? Or is oats a constant companion of spelled on the globe? The latter was soon confirmed. Weed oats were found in the spelled crops in the Simbirsk province, near Ufa and Kazan. And here the oats looked like a cultured species, but differed in appearance. One was found and quite unusual. All shaggy, as if velvet from many small hairs.
Vavilov is eager to find out how things are in other regions, in other countries. Letters of inquiry fly to Dagestan, to Bulgaria, to Abyssinia. Even to the Basque country on the Iberian Peninsula. Samples are sent from there to Leningrad. The picture is repeated everywhere. Where spelled, there is oats. Very similar to sowing. And a little bit different. Companion oats. Weed oats.
The oatmeal retinue does not always get along peacefully with spelled. Wheat often survives. Peasants on the Volga have long complained: "We sow spelled - we reap oats!" Frightened by the onslaught of the weed, they seriously think: is not wheat being reborn into oats? Where does it come from? Indeed, the unfortunate spelled sometimes completely drowns in the bluish rain of oat panicles. The further north, the more ferocious the onslaught of oats becomes.
 The chain of events captured by the academician leads him to a paradoxical conclusion. Nobody has ever introduced oats into the culture. He did it himself, came with a speck and drove it out. Apart from the will of man and even against this will.And another conclusion, no less stunning: our northern oats are the child of the south. Its origins, birthplace are the mountains of Abyssinia, the ridges of the Mediterranean. Different addresses, but not one at all, as the respected classics thought before Vavilov.
The world appreciated all the benefits of oats much later than the advantages of rice and wheat. They say that it happened thanks to the horses. When you needed high-calorie feed for the cavalry. Approximately two thousand years BC. This is hardly the case. Otherwise, why would the Romans consider oats to be a disaster for their fields? But the fact that horses choose oats from all dishes is a well-known fact: don't drive the horse with a whip, but drive the oats!
Wild animals appreciated oats no less than horses. Of course, then he appreciated when they began to sow it. Mishka Toptygin especially liked the new dish. Toptygin's passion for oats is an established fact. Every hunter knows that it is easiest and most likely to get a bear on the edge of an oat field in autumn. And many shamefully take advantage of this weakness of the clubfoot, killing him not in a fair fight, but sneaking around the corner.
Toptygin will not eat so much. Not much and trample. But it is interesting to watch him at this time. A shaggy bear rolls out on oats usually at night. Crumples brittle stems. Sucks up the swollen panicles. A tousled back sways noisily over the grass. The rustle is in the oats, as if the rain is falling or the wind is bending a panicle.
Naturalist A. Onegov, who lived among the bears for two years and managed to gain confidence in them, says that one bear went to oats openly, not hiding and not paying attention to either livestock or people.
“I was leaving the forest, crossing the road in full view of the whole village. She would sit comfortably on the edge of the oat field and so, sitting on her hind legs, crawled over the oats, raking ripe panicles with her front paws and slowly sucking them.
Intrigued the naturalist and another bear. Tracking the clubfoot on the trail, Onegov noticed that his pet was in a great hurry, as if he was late for a date or rushing on an important matter. He did not pay attention to the anthills, to which the great hunter, avoided thickets of ripe lingonberries. Finally, the tracks led to a large clearing. Toptygin walked around the clearing, hung on it, as if he had lost something, and, turning abruptly, disappeared into the neighboring ravine.
After weighing the circumstances, the naturalist understood what was the matter. Oats were previously sown in the meadow. This year, people left. The meadow remained unseeded. Mishka could not know this. He arrived at the appointed hour to enjoy the oats, and was discouraged not to find his favorite panicles.
And here is how another witness from the city of Nelidov describes Toptygin's oatmeal meal: “Grabbing a bunch of stems with his paw, he pulled them to him, took them into his mouth and pulled the panicles through his teeth, breaking off the grains with a crash. At the same time, chomping loudly, he chewed, noisily sniffed and closed his eyes with pleasure.
However, is there only one clubfoot lover of oats? In autumn, heavy wood grouses and black grouse rise from oat fields. Their craws are tightly packed with grain. Rodents also do not sleep. And it is no coincidence. There is much more fat in oats than in wheat, rye and any other cereal. Five or six percent. More than milk. No wonder oatmeal is so satisfying.
Or maybe the animal's passion for oats should be explained not only by fat content? The first to understand this, it seems, were the British. They noticed that turkeys that feed on oats are more valuable in the market than those that feed on other grains - wheat, barley, or corn. We checked what was the matter. It turned out that their meat acquires a special taste and incomparable aroma, which cannot be found with any other feed.
Oats do not affect different birds in the same way. Chickens that do not receive oats begin to pull out their feathers. Sometimes they even become cannibals. It is worth putting them on an oatmeal diet, and immediately everything goes back to normal. It turns out that oats contain certain substances that are very necessary for all living creatures. Which ones are still unknown. It is not for nothing that people with sick bronchi are prescribed to drink a decoction of oats in milk. And the disease recedes. Only the grain should be whole. With scales.
One naturalist recalled that a parrot, which he kept in a cage, greeted him with joyful cries if the owner approached him with a bunch of green oats. Even tropical birds were imbued with love for our northern cereal. A certain Belgian had two budgerigar and disappeared into the trees of a nearby park. Searches have yielded no results. Meanwhile, as it turned out later, they did not die, but survived. And even the chicks were brought out. In the fall, the entire noisy company was found in an oat field, where they found shelter and high-calorie food.
Feathered people like not only grain. And the leaves too. Especially geese. Geese wintering in the Caspian Sea seem to love oat greens more than other grasses. When the number of birds began to decrease, bird watchers tried to sow oats. This had its effect. The greenery sprang up, and the geese were again drawn to the Caspian Sea.
 And yet, the second place in love with oats is taken not by black grouse or geese, but by hares. In the Zavidovsky hunting farm near Kalinin, the hares were given a choice of different food. They were hung on a rope with garlands. The Rusaks chose sheaves of oat. The passion for oats even sometimes overpowers the fear of the fox. They talk about this case. A hare is sitting at the edge of the field and eating oats. A fox is circling nearby - catching mice. Oblique, of course, sees the fox. But sorry to throw the sweet oats. As soon as the fox moves slightly in the hare direction, the oblique will run back at the same interval. Maintain the distance - and again for food!
Appreciated fat cereals and wild boars. In Poland, where the wild boar is considered the central figure among the forest brethren, they tried to evaluate the passion of the wild boar mathematically. We compared how much more attractive oats are among other "pickles". Forty thousand Polish boars eat oats and potatoes, which are specially grown for them. And although the tubers are so nice to dig in, potatoes are visited twice less often. Wheat and rye four times.
And now let's return to the question we started with: who is the founder of the cultivated, sowing oats? There is still no complete clarity. Academician A. Maltsev suspected that oats originated from a weed - wild oat. Only the wild oat itself is still little studied. In Siberia, it appeared quite recently. At the beginning of the century, Siberians had no idea about him. In 1908, the magazine "Northern Economy" told how the acquaintance with a new stranger took place.
A certain peasant in Altai drove through the village of Ostrovnoye and found that the supply of feed for the horses had run out. He borrowed two poods of oats from a local driver. He promised to repay the debt on the way back. I returned it, but not exactly what I took. The driver received from him "an outlandish mixture of ordinary oats with black." Since he had never seen black-grain oats, he decided to separate the impurity from the bulk. Maybe something special will grow up? And so it happened.
Sowed. Chernozerny immediately behaved in an unusual manner. It grew quickly, overtaking all other plants. Bushy on glory. The stems stretched out like a solid wall. They towered over the neighboring loaves by the whole palm. And when the drought came and everything around began to wither and wither, the black-grain did not wither and did not wither. On the contrary, he began to keep up. Ahead of schedule. Ahead of time. The driver could not get enough of his brainchild, and in his heart he thanked the peasant more than once for giving him unprecedented oats.
Gathered to harvest. But when he came to the field, he found that the panicles were empty. Most of the grain has disappeared.
Harvested less than sowed.
Meanwhile, the disappeared grains did not disappear. They made themselves felt a year later, two years later, ten years later ... Black oats began to appear in the fields not only of the driver, but of other peasants from the village of Ostrovnoye. Then he was seen in other villages. From there, the stranger rushed north, and only the Kamala River held back his pressure for a while. In three years, in general, he advanced one and a half hundred miles and almost reached Barnaul, resting again on a water barrier, this time on the Ob River. In the occupied area, black oats stunned real oats, littered arable land, and drove the peasants into despair.Where the stranger settled, they no longer dreamed of grain. It is not hard to guess that black oats are wild oats.
It is tempting to assume that the planted oats came out of wild oats. In the crops, he constantly visits. However, it is not at all easy to prove that wild oats are the progenitor of oats. Outwardly, both are very similar. The leaves are colored the same bluish color. Only the leaf blade of wild oats is turned counterclockwise. Yes, in the spikelets, each grain has a long twisted awn, which the cultured one does not have. Why does wild oat have such a long awn? To survive. Cultivated oats under the wing of a man. Trusted. Ovsyug has to rely only on himself. To survive and germinate, its grains must crawl into cracks in the soil, where it is wetter. The weevil will fall on an even place where there is no gap, and here the awn helps out. It is hygroscopic. Humidity changes. The spine is twisted and unwound. The weevil moves further and further until it falls into the gap. The goal has been achieved. Now the spine is no longer needed. In the spring - if you look at it while lying on the ground - sometimes crooked wild bobs stick out from all the cracks in the field, like the legs of grasshoppers.
There is one more feature that allows wild oats to survive in life's troubles. Its grains are crumbling, but cultured oats do not. For this, wild oats were nicknamed "flying". It is difficult to imagine what a lot of flying weevils are poured onto the ground in the crops of wheat or oats. Up to 70 million pieces per hectare! 7000 per square meter. Even if one seed out of twenty sprouts, and then three hundred stems will rise. It is not surprising that in 1961 in Western Siberia almost 90 thousand tons of wild oats were brought to the procurement points. Together with grain, of course.
Where does it come from, fly? Some agronomists were inclined to think that oats and even ... wheat give rise to it. After all, the longer grain is cultivated in one field, the more wild oats. They began to check the ears and in 1953 they found wild oat grain in a spikelet of wheat. Then they found two ears of wheatgrass and each one also had a grain of oat. Czech scientist A. Klechka found a weevil flying in a rye ear ...
If indeed all grain breads produce wild oats, then it will hardly be easy to squeeze a noxious weed from the light. In fact, in the best farms, wild oats have completely survived from the fields. And no one spawned it after them. No rye, no oats, no wheat. And here it is useful to recall one old article that the farmer I. Zhukovsky wrote about this in 1913.
Zhukovsky also found wild oats in the ears of wheat. Reflecting on the reasons for such a strange neighborhood, he drew attention to one fact that did not catch the eye of any of the then agronomists. Wild oats were not found in all wheat at all. In harmless - yes. In the spinous - no! Why? After all, the spinous gives birth to its wheat grains. Why not do the same with wild oats? What does awn have to do with it?
And Zhukovsky makes the correct conclusion. Wheat awn is to blame for this tangled story. Let us assume that a grain of oat was not born in an ear of wheat, but flew in from the side (no wonder - fly!). In this case, the wheat awns will not allow it to penetrate the ear. And barren wheat has no such obstacle. A wild oat grain lands there and with the help of its own curve, a cranked awn and under the influence of dew, rain and sun, Zhukovsky adds, squeezes, makes its way to the very spikelet. Try now to prove that it did not grow here! So he misled the inexperienced owners of wild oats.
The clear fit of wild oats to the environment began to seem truly limitless to many botanists. As soon as, say, not leaving the field fallow, wild oats appeared in such a great abundance, in such an incredible abundance, that they began to oppress not only wheat, but also itself!
His rapid aggression in the fields began to be explained by long flights of weevils at the behest of the wind. We remembered the nickname again - fly. The Egyptian botanist M. Farghali was especially successful in this. In 1940, he studied the dispersion of sbmyan by the wind in the desert. Chose 65 plants.Ovsyug was among the champions of distant wanderings. What was the embarrassment when it turned out that the opposite was true. Could it be that Farghali did the experiments inaccurately? Or maybe he did not conduct them, but used someone else's data? Apparently, he did not even know that academician A. Maltsev made special observations ten years earlier. The wind blew, whistled and howled, and wild oat grains, breaking off their panicles, fell almost next to the mother's stalk. And they didn't fly away. Maltsev's conclusion turned out to be very important for practice. Many peasants at that time gave up when fly appeared. Fight, do not fight, it will come from the side anyway!
Maltsev said firmly: “Root it out! And do not be afraid, they will not come flying from the neighboring field! "
I foresee the question: how to combine this last statement by Maltsev with the story that happened to the driver? How did “black oats” spread over 150 versts in the district in three years? Didn't the wind help him? Maltsev, who told about this case, did not indicate the reason. However, it is not difficult to guess. It was not the wind that helped, but the man. Even if the wind carried away the grains in flight, it would not be able to throw them hundreds of miles away. Our ordinary pine has seeds, having excellent wings, from the thirty-meter watchtower of the mother tree, with the help of the wind in the open felling, fly away only ... one hundred meters, and even more often fifty! Where can I fly here with its half-meter height.
So, no matter how skillfully the fly has adapted to a difficult life situation, he cannot live without the help of a person. He needs the peasant's assistance. At least by the fact that he plows the ground. Creates cracks and cracks in it, into which the wild oat grain can climb. Throw a handful of oat kernels on the hard virgin soil. They will die ingloriously, because they are not able to drill and cut into virgin soil. Wild oats are a different matter. The lower end of the weevil is sharp as an awl. Longest spine. Ostyu catches on the grass, with an awl digs into the ground and screwed in like a corkscrew. Some savages even have two awns. While spinning, they cross with each other. In this case, one of them slides off. A shock occurs, and the weevil is driven into the ground, just as modern machines drive piles into the foundation of a future building. Such self-slaughtering oats can sow themselves even on trampled roadsides and in pastures trampled by horses' hooves.
It is easier for wild oats to fight off all kinds of animals. Academician A. Maltsev, the best oat expert in the world, has collected a collection of different varieties in the Voronezh province. In the hungry years after the civil war, mice constantly plundered his treasury. The grains of the wild oats lay right there. The "robbers" did not touch them.
But back to wild oats. For a long time, chemists could not find a herbicide for it. Too close to cultivated, sown oats. To kill wild oats meant to kill the oats growing in the neighborhood. Finally we found what we wanted. And the poison poured onto the crooked fields. Meanwhile, it seems, it is possible to do without such drastic measures. At least, agronomist N. Artyukov, an expert on wild oats, considers it wasteful to destroy the excellent forage grass of wild oats. He advises getting rid of the weed with a rather simple trick. They do this. A yellow sweet clover is sown under the canopy of a grain crop. After the harvest, the field is harrowed across. Wild oat starts to sprout. He is not exterminated. On the contrary, they are fed with fertilizers. And in early June, together with sweet clover, they mow for hay. And the field is freed from weeds, and even gives hay. And wild oat roots restore the soil architecture. Artyukov's slogan: "Do not poison, but feed!"
A. Smirnov. Tops and roots
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