Avena nuda
species of plant
Avena nuda (hulless oat, naked oat) is a species of grass with edible seeds in the oat genus Avena.
When threshed, the hull separates quite readily from the grain.
Naked oats are thought to have originated in China where they have been grown for centuries and used for both feed and food, and then migrated from China to Europe, where naked oats were grown in Britain as early as the middle of the sixteenth century.
Rather than being a variant of common oat, analysis of sequenced genomic data of 100 oat plants from around the world provides evidence that hulled oat (Avena sativa) and naked oat diverged around 51,000 years ago and were likely domesticated independently in Europe and China.
Pillas
A type of naked oat called pillas, pilez, or pil-corn in the Cornish language and dialect of English may have been the same species as Avena nuda. John Ray calls it Avena minuta. Well known in the 17th century it was commonly grown in Cornwall as late as the 18th and 19th centuries. The last known crop was harvested at Sancreed in 1867.
In form pillas is described as being similar to rye, but with much finer straw. The straw, being much softer and tougher than wheat straw, was used for plaiting hats.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Avena nuda” is species of plant. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Avena, nuda and species, not as a finished interpretation.
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The date and method of observation matter as much as the stated conclusion, especially where classification or consensus has changed. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 22, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q159777. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1867.
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This entry incorporates text from “Avena nuda” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.