Some representatives of grasses, such as rice, barley, oats, and wheat, have long needle-like elongations of lemma – awns. Genetic mechanisms of awns development control remain poorly understood. This article give a literature review on the awnedness control in rice, barley, and wheat. Due to these species relationship and evolutionary conservatism of developmental mechanisms, it is possible to apply principle of synteny to transfer existing data on rice and barley to a wheat. Thus, it is possible to find out the mechanisms of awns development and discovery the corresponding genes in wheat, which is important and necessary task.