Anna Tyshinski

My fact this week is that wild oats sow themselves.

Yeah, so basically they're plants that look a bit like oats and they have seeds at the top of them that come in a little cluster that's called a panicle.

But they don't panic.

They very calmly have two spikes sticking out of them called awns and they look a bit like very long hairy legs.

And basically when the seeds come off, they go onto the ground and when they dry out, they twist one way and when they get moist, they twist another.

So as the moisture goes up and down, they twist back and forth.

And it reminded me a bit of one of those moves you used to do in the gym where you lie on your back and splay your legs out and roll around.

Yeah, our teacher was sacked, actually.

But it makes them sort of crawl around and then they'll find a crevice.

Eventually, they'll fall into a crevice.

And once they've fallen into a crevice, this motion makes them drill down into it.

So they literally bury themselves.

We think so, although there seems to be some disagreement, but I think they are, yes.

Although the oats that we eat, the cultivated oats, have lost these awns because they're bred out so the seeds can get much bigger.

I think it ended up meaning something immoral really early, though, because by the turn of the 17th century, so from the late 16th century...

Wild oats, plural, weirdly, was a term for a dissolute and immoral man.

So you'd say he's a bit of a wild oat.

Ooh, it's a bit disobedient.

Of course, according to some people, they are still only animal feed.

Or according to Samuel Johnson 300 years ago, who famously said he described the oat, the all normal oat, as a grain which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland appears to support the people.