Cereal Rye

Largely cultivated in Europe as a cereal forming a staple food.

Culm up to 50-100 cm tall, 2 mm in diameter. Blade narrowly linear-lanceolate, 20-30 cm long, 6-15 mm wide; ligule minute, 0.5 mm long, truncate; auricle present. Spike cylindrical, flat, 10-15 mm long excluding the awn.Spikelets with 2fertile florets, 10 mm long; glumes very narrow, subulate, subequal, 1-3-nerved, shortly awn-tipped, 18 mm long; lemma deltoid-lanceolate, 5-nerved, hispid along midnerve and margins, as long as the spikelet, long awned; palea deltoid-lanceolate, as long as the lemma, 2-keeled, margins overlapping, truncate, minutely ciliate.

Culms erect, 80–180 cm tall, scabrous or villous below spike. Leaf blade glaucous, 10–20 × (0.2–)0.5–1 cm, glabrous or abaxial surface sparsely pilose. Spike erect, 5–15 × 1–1.5 cm excluding awns; rachis tough. Spikelets ca. 15 mm excluding awns, with 2(or 3) florets. Glumes linear or linear-lanceolate, 10–12 mm, scabrous along keels, margin membranous, apex usually acuminate. Lemma strongly compressed, 12–15 mm, pectinately spinose-ciliate along keels; awn 30–50 mm. Palea equaling lemma. Fl. and fr. Jul–Aug. 2n = 14.

is the cultivated rye. It is, apparently, rarely grown in Pakistan although there are records of it from Baluchistan, N.W.F.P. and Kashmir. It resembles S. segetale but has a tough rhachis.

Cultivated. Anhui, Fujian, Guizhou, Hebei, Heilongjiang, Henan, Hubei,Nei Mongol, Ningxia, Shaanxi, Taiwan, Xinjiang, Yunnan [widely cultivated elsewhere].

Triticum cereale (Linnaeus) Salisbury (1796), not Schrank (1789); T. secale Link.