Wild Rice

Wild rice is the common name for four species of grasses in the genus Zizania and for the grain harvested from them, also called manoomin, mnomen, psin, Canada rice, Indian rice or water oats; the grain has a chewy outer sheath around a tender inner grain with a slightly vegetal taste. It belongs to the same botanical tribe, Oryzeae, as domesticated rice, though the two are distinct plants, and it grows in shallow water such as small lakes and slow-flowing streams, historically and still gathered mainly in North America and, to a lesser extent, in China, where the plant's stem is also eaten as a vegetable. It holds major cultural and economic importance for Native American communities, particularly the Ojibwe, whose word manoomin, meaning harvesting grain or good grain, gives the crop one of its names, and commercial cultivation expanded through the late twentieth century, with Minnesota naming it the official state grain.