Wild Rice

Also Indian rice. The grain from a perennial grass, Zizania aquatica, wild rice is similar to white rice only in that both are cereals of the grass family and they like to grow in shallow water or mud flats. Wild rice is the only grain besides corn that is cross-pollinated. The panicles of blooms show female blossoms on the crest and male pollen-bearing flowers at the base. As they bloom in succession down the stem, it takes weeks for all to be pollinated. The first Europeans to taste wild rice in the New World were French settlers from Brittany, who disregarded the Chippewa mahnomen, meaning "seeds from the wild", and instead nicknamed it folle avoine, meaning "crazy oats."

Wild rice was known to Native Americans: the Sioux called it msickquatash, the Iroquois mausamp and the Crow rockahominy. In Minnesota, to harvest wild rice during its short, three-week season, residents must buy a special license. No power motors are allowed on the rice lakes, only canoes. One person "poles" the canoe through the paddies while another, seated in front, bends the stalks into the boat and knocks off the rice with a wooden stick. The high price of hand-harvested wild rice is always given as the reason for its low consumption, but when harvesting of paddy rice became mechanized in the late 1980s, California became the leading producer and its price promptly came down. Paddy-grown wild rice is usually several dollars less than lake-grown wild rice, the former being smoother and darker and usually takes longer to cook.

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