Determination and description of our cereal plants, with an overview and description of the more important forage crops, field, and meadow flowers. Illustrated with 244 black and white images. Cereals in the narrower sense are cultivated forms of sweet grasses (Poaceae). The cultivation and breeding of cereals have been agronomically documented in the Near East (Fertile Crescent), practiced over 10,000 years ago. The first cultivated cereal species were einkorn, emmer, and barley. They spread in Central and Western Europe about 7,000 years ago. Cereal grains consist of the starchy and (to a lesser extent) protein-rich endosperm, the fatty germ, the fused seed coat and fruit wall, as well as the protein-rich aleurone layer located between the endosperm and the seed coat. The protein contained in some cereal genera (wheat, spelt, rye, barley, triticale) is also...