419 
GENUS 2. ZIZANIA. Gronovius « 
{[From Zizanion ,the ancient name of some wild plant, supposed to be Lolium perenne.) 
Flowers monoecious, the staminate and pistilate in ome-flowered spike- 
lets on the same panicle ; glumes none, or rudimentary, forming a little 
cup ; paleae herbaeeo-membranaccous, convex, awnless in the staminate, 
the lower tipped with a straight awn in the pistilate flowers ; stamens 
six; stigmas pencil-form. Stout aquatic grasses. 
4. Zizania Aquatica. Linnams. 
Syn.—Z. clavulosa, Miclix. Hydroporum esculentum, Link. Tusca- 
rora rice, water oats, Indian rice, wild rice, &c. Folle avoine, of the 
French. Panicle large, pyramidal, lower branches staminate, spreading, 
upper branches pistillate, erect; pedicels clavate; lower paleae long" 
awned rough ; styles distinct; grain linear slender. Annual; flowers in 
July and August; culms 2 to 9 feet high. 
Swampy margins of streams, in shallow water. The stagnant water 
of swamps, and the still water of the smaller lakes, seem not to be 
favorable to the growth of the zizania aquatica, but a gently flowing 
current, as the margin of streams and the outlets of the small lakes* 
where the water has a depth of from one or two to perhaps six or eio-ht 
feet, with a sott, slimy, mud bottom, is the appropriate habitat 
It forms an important item of food for the Indian tribes, who obtain 
it by paddling a canoe among the rice, when, with a hooked stick, they 
draw the stems over the canoe, and beat off the grain.* The harvest 
continues but a very few days, for when ripe the slightest touch shakes 
the grain off, and if the wind should blow hard for a day or two the rice 
is all lost. It is gathered both “in the milk,” and. after it has attained 
to maturity. Those who have used the wild rice prefer it to the com¬ 
mon rice. 
It would be well for the Agricultural Society to encourage some expe- 
*1 am indebted to Messrs. G. P. Putnam cfc Co. for an “electrotype copy” of thei 
plate representing Indian women gathering wild rice, ona of tha ornaments of the^ 
Illustrated Record of the Great Exhibition at N. York ; a very valuable wn >- ‘ 
should be in tho hands of every person of tasto in the country. The oric-in-i] 
▼as by Capt. Eastman, and was first published in Schoolcraft’s History of the Indian 
Tribes, part 3, page 63, plate 4.— See ante, p, 397. 
