The Wind That Shakes The Barley

A single strand of barley. I tried to photograph a whole field of it but it was waving violently around in the wind, so I stole a bit and took it home. I looked barley up on Wikithingy. There's so much to find out about it, of which the following was the most fascinating little nugget I thought. It's responsible for our strange shoe sizes apparently. Who knew?
'Barley grains were used for measurement in England, there being three or four barleycorns to the inch and four or five poppy seeds to the barleycorn.The statute definition of an inch was three barleycorns, although by the 19th century, this had been superseded by standard inch measures.This unit still persists in the shoe sizes used in Britain and the USA.'