Common Wheat

Cultivated annuals or biennials; culms tufted, 6-7-noded; ligule short, membranous. Spike up to 10 cm long, rachis 2-3 mm long. spikelets 2-6-flowered, 10-15 mm long, upper ones sterile; rachilla about 1 mm long; glumes coriaceous, slightly membranous near the margins, ovate, strongly keeled on the upper half, 7-9-nerved, usually with tessellate nerves on the upper part; palea 2-keeled, narrowly winged, as long as the lemma; anthers 1.8-2 mm long. Caryopsis 5 mm long, hairy at the apex, enclosed between the lemma and palea, hilum linear; embryo 1/4 as long as the grain.

Culms hollow, 60–130(–150) cm tall, ca. 5-noded; nodes glabrous. Leaf blade flat, 10–24 × 0.4–1.5 cm, usually glabrous. Spike lax or dense, usually narrowed distally, square or subsquare in cross section, 5–18 cm, with up to 29 spikelets; rachis disarticulating or tough and not disarticulating, margin ciliate; internodes 3–4 mm. Spikelets with 4–9 florets (distal florets sterile). Glumes laxly appressed or adnate to floret, ovate or elliptic, sometimes very hard, distinctly or indistinctly to obscurely keeled, pubescent or glabrous; keel sometimes prolonged at apex into shortish tooth; tooth apex subobtuse, acute, or tapering into short awn. Lemma oblong-lanceolate, pubescent or glabrous, awnless to long awned; awn usually divergent. Palea subequaling lemma. Anthers yellow or purplish. Caryopsis usually free from lemma and palea. Fl. and fr. Apr–Aug.

Widely cultivated.

Widely cultivated all over the world.

Throughout China [cultivated worldwide].

Commonly cultivated, e.g., in fields of Hordeum and Triticum; below 3500 m.