How to tell the difference between barley, rye, and wheat?

Barley seeds are solitary. (One seed per peduncle.)

Rye seeds come in pairs.

Wheat seeds are triplets.

Here's a photo.

Good information!

So have I identified those below correctly? I don't have any harvested wheat at the moment.

Its amazing the variety within these grain families. I just happened to have a field of barley, oats and wheat.

Lauren Ritz wrote:Good information!

So have I identified those below correctly?

IMG_20190728_082954224 looks like wheat to me (three seeds per cluster).

I can't tell on IMG_20190728_082618235. Looks more like barley. Separate one seed cluster from the stem. How many seeds are there per cluster?

Rye.jpg is archetypal rye.

224 had one seed per cluster. 235 was growing with the rye in the third picture, but like you said it doesn't look the same. I just separated it out and we might have a combination there. Some of the grains look blueish like the rye. I’m not sure if I’m separating them out correctly from the clusters.

I’ve put the grains beside the head they came out of in the next picture. So just based on numbers it looks like I have one wheat, two rye and two barley? Although four of the five look alike to me.

Here's a fun one. These two seed heads seem to be on the same plant. I triple checked, tracing the two stems down to the ground, and if there are two separate plants there I sure can't see where one stops and the other starts, it really really looks like they're coming out of the same crown. But that can't be right, can it??

I'll have to wait until harvest time and try this seed counting thing again. Last year, I had a lot of trouble with that method because it seemed like the count was inconsistent within a single seed head. I think the issue may have been that those plants were really struggling, so maybe some of the seeds that should have been there were so underdeveloped I just couldn't distinguish them from chaff? This year's batch is much happier, so maybe it'll all make more sense in a month or two.