the.com/wild rice
the grass impersonating rice, too proud to actually be rice
means An aquatic grass native to North America whose long, dark, nutty seeds are harvested and cooked like a grain, despite not being true rice.
from The name is a botanical white lie: "rice" comes through Old French and Latin (oriza) from Greek oryza, ultimately borrowed from an Eastern source for the true rice plant (genus Oryza). Wild rice, however, belongs to the genus Zizania — a separate North American and East Asian grass that early European settlers simply called "wild rice" because the seeds looked and behaved like the familiar grain. So it wears "rice" as a borrowed surname, a cousin in cuisine but not in family.
- not rice
- It's an aquatic grass seed, botanically unrelated to rice
- native pride
- Sacred staple harvested by Ojibwe for centuries
- harvest method
- Traditionally knocked into canoes with wooden sticks
- price tag
- Costs far more than rice it isn't
- slow grower
- Each grain takes a full season to mature
minnesota wild rice — native american harvest in minnesota lakes produces ~2 million pounds annually, protected by tribal sovereignty
lake leech wild rice — ojibwe-managed traditional rice beds in northern minnesota, federally recognized treaty harvesting rights since 1854
california wild rice farms — commercial cultivation in sacramento valley produces bulk of us supply, emerged in 1970s as alternative to hand-harvested tribal rice