From the wheat awn to distinguish, barley awn is very long, and the length of the spike is about the same, wheat awn is relatively short, barley seeds have no shell, wheat has. Barley is generally used as raw materials for wine, or as fodder, wheat is mainly processed flour. Harvest of barley earlier than wheat. Other details see below:

Wheat (Triticum aestivum) Gramineae wheat genus of important cultivated cereals. Annual or perennial herbs; stems with 4-7 nodes, the number of effective tillers is related to the soil and fertilizer environment. Leaf blades long linear; spikes erect, rachis continued without breaking; spikelets solitary, containing 3-5(-9) flowers, upper flowers sterile; glumes leathery, ovoid to oblong, with 5-9 veins; dorsum ridged; lemmas boat-shaped, base without basal disk, their shape, color, trichomes, and awn length varying with variety. Caryopsis large, oblong, apically hairy, ventrally with deep longitudinal grooves, not glued to lemma and easily detached.

Barley, a crop of the grass family Barley. It is also called naked barley and rice barley because its seeds have no husk. Herbs annual or perennial; spikelets with 1 flower, 3 clustered on each node of the nodding rachis, one or all of the spikelets fruiting, the lateral ones sometimes infertile or reduced to awns; ears 6-rowed if all the spikelets fruit, 4-rowed if all the spikelets are fruiting and the lateral 2 spikelets are overlapping the opposite spikelet, and 2-rowed if only the central spikelet is fruiting; glumes very narrow, resembling the involucre very closely and supporting the 3 spikelets; lemmas with 3 spikelets; lemma awned; fruit tightly enclosed in lemma.