JENKS| POPULAR DESCRIPTION 1025 
the plant in early accounts of the Northwest. Marquette once called it 
Fausse avoine (false oat), and the Latin wena futua was doubtless 
applied to the plant because of the term adopted by the French. It 
is difficult to say what the Siouan norm is, but probably it is ps7n, 
which is often followed by some slightly accented vowel, as in the 
word psind. 
Screntiric Drscrretion 
The genus Zzania comprises two species, and is well characterized 
by the unisexual spikelets in an androgynous panicle, each having two 
glumes, and the males having two stamens. The plant ordinarily 
grows from 5 to 10 feet high, with a thick, spongy stem and an abun- 
dance of long, broad leaves. The chief mark of distinction between 
the two species is that the m7//acea bears its male and female flowers 
intermixed on its fruit head, while the aguatica bears its female 
flowers near the top, where the cylindrical panicle, from 1 to 2 feet 
long, is quite appressed, and its male flowers on the more widely 
spread lower branches of the panicle. The glumes or husks of the 
female or fertile flowers are about an inch long and are armed with an 
awn or beard usually of about the same length as the husk, but at 
times of twice its length. The grain, which is inclosed within the 
glumes, is a slender cylindrical kernel, varying in length from almost 
half an inch to nearly an inch, and is of dark slate color when ripe. 
The plant is an annual, and grows in either fresh or brackish waters 
from a bed of mud alluvium. 
PopuLarR DESCRIPTION 
Wild rice is one of the most beautiful aquatic single-stem plants in 
America. The grain is shed into the water when it ripens in the 
autumn, and lies in the soft ooze of alluvial mud at the bottom of a 
lake or river until spring, when it germinates and grows rapidly to 
the surface. Text-books have frequently called the plant perennial. 
The old stalks die down below the surface of the water before the 
time arrives for the new ones to appear, so the inference has been 
made that they all come from the same root; but the plant is an 
annual, growing from new seed each year. It was called a biennial by 
the Detroit Gazette December 24, 1820. 
Xarly in June the shoot appears at the surface of the water and at 
once begins to prepare its fruit head. At about this stage of its 
growth it has been described as follows: 
When seen from a distance, they [the rice beds] look like low green islands on the 
lakes; on passing through one of these rice beds when the rice is in flower, it has a 
beautiful appearance with its broad grassy leaves and light waving spikes, garnished 
with pale yellow green blossoms, delicately shaded with reddish purple, from 
beneath which fall three elegant straw-colored anthers, which move with every 
breath of air or slightest motion of the waters.? 
1Catherine Parr Traill, Back woods of Canada, p. 237. 


