WILD SEEDS OF FOOD VALUE 



they sometimes do as thick as grass in a field, or as 

 they may be made to do by sowing the seed in cul- 

 tivated ground, they can be cut, threshed and win- 

 nowed like flax or wheat. '^ 



A wild food plant that has had a remarkable- in- 

 fluence in geographic nomenclature is the Wild Eice 

 {Zisania aquatica, L.). It is the folle avoine of the 

 Trench voyageurs, and the menomin of the North- 

 west Indians, to one tribe of whom — the Menominees 

 — it gave a name. Mr. Albert E. Jenks, whose 

 exhaustive monograph, "The Wild Eice Gatherers 

 of the Upper Lakes,"* is a mine of information 

 about the plant, instances over 160 places (counties, 

 townships, towns, railway stations, rivers, creeks, 

 lakes and ponds) which have borne a name synony- 

 mous with this same Wild Eice. It is of the same 

 family as the rice of commerce, and is a species of 

 annual grass found growing by the acre, even the 

 hundreds of acres, in ponds, swamps and still water- 

 ways, both fresh and brackish, in virtually every 

 State of the Union east of the Eocky Mountains, 

 and also in Japan and China. It is exceptionally 

 abundant in the regions bordering on the Great 



1 An important use of Chia is as the basis of a soft drink. See 

 the chapter on Beverage Plants. 



2 Printed in the 19th Ann. Report, Bur. Amer. Ethnology. 



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