Also known as Hordeum vulgare, it is a grain and a member of the grass family. Varietals of barley are considered a pioneer species (time to brush up on your high school Biology if you don’t remember what that means). As a grain, it has been characterized as chewy.

It has a storied history. Barley was first domesticated in the region known as the Fertile Crescent, “crop”ping up in 9000 BCE. The crop soon migrated through the Eurasia continent by 2000 BCE, relatively recently all told.

There are quite a few varieties of the plant. Some of the most common are 2-row barley and 6-row barley. The difference here lies in what is called the rachis. In a 2-row barley, the spikelets on the barley are arranged trilaterally, where the central spike is fertile. The fertile spikelets in a 6-row barley are arranged laterally. There is also hulless barley, also known as naked barley.

The differences in the barley go beyond simple anatomical differences. For this reason, uses for different types of barley vary between industries and regions. For example, brewers in Europe generally use 2-row barley while their North American counterparts tend to use 6-row barley or a mixture of the two.

Barley is used for the usual suspects when it comes to foodstuffs: breads, soups, alcoholic beverages, etc. It is also used for livestock feed; there have been more studies into the use of hulless barley for that purpose. While this is more of a tertiary use, barley has also been used for forms of algae control and for biofuel.