Wild rice

Three species of wild rice are native to North America: • Northern wild rice (Zizania palustris) is an annual plant native to the Great Lakes region of North America, the aquatic areas of the Boreal Forest regions of Northern Ontario, Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba in Canada and Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan and Idaho in the US. • Southern or annual wild rice (Z. aquatica), also an annual, grows in the Saint Lawrence River, the state of Florida, and on the Atlantic and Gulf coasts of the United States. • Texas wild rice (Z. texana) is a perennial plant found only in a small area along the San Marcos River in central Texas. One species is native to Asia: • Manchurian wild rice (Z. latifolia; incorrect synonym: Z. caduciflora) is a perennial native to China. Texas wild rice is in danger of extinction due to pollution and loss of suitable habitat in its limited range. The pollen of Texas wild rice can only travel about away from a parent plant. If a receptive female flower receives no pollen, no seeds are produced. Manchurian wild rice has almost disappeared from the wild in its native range, but has been accidentally introduced into the wild in New Zealand and is considered an invasive species there. The genomes of northern and Manchurian wild rices have been sequenced. There appears to be a whole genome duplication after the genus split from Oryza. == Culinary use==

The species most commonly harvested as grain are the annual species: Zizania palustris and Zizania aquatica. The former, though now domesticated and grown commercially, is still often gathered from lakes in the traditional manner, especially by indigenous peoples in North America; the latter was also used extensively in the past. The stems and root shoots also contain an edible portion on the interior. Use by Native Americans Native Americans and others harvest wild rice by canoeing into a stand of plants, and bending the ripe grain heads with two small wooden poles/sticks called "knockers" or "flails", so as to thresh the seeds into the canoe. One person vans (or "knocks") rice into the canoe while the other paddles slowly or uses a push pole. The plants are not beaten with the knockers, but require only a gentle brushing to dislodge the mature grain. Some seeds fall to the muddy bottom and germinate later in the year. The size of the knockers, as well as other details, are prescribed in state and tribal law. By Minnesota statute, knockers must be at most diameter, long, and weight. Several Native American cultures, such as the Ojibwe, consider wild rice to be a sacred component of their culture. The Ojibwe people call this plant , meaning (commonly translated ). In 2018, the White Earth Nation of Ojibwe granted certain rights (sometimes compared to rights of nature or to granting it legal personhood), including the right to exist and flourish; in August 2021, the Ojibwe filed a lawsuit on behalf of wild rice to stop the Enbridge Line 3 oil sands pipeline, which puts the plant's habitat at risk. Tribes that are recorded as historically harvesting Zizania aquatica are the Dakota, Menominee, Meskwaki, Ojibwe, Cree, Omaha, Ponca, Thompson, and Ho-Chunk (Winnebago). Native people who utilized Zizania palustris are the Ojibwe, Ottawa/Odawa and Potawatomi. Ways of preparing it varied from stewing the grains with venison stock and/or maple syrup, making it into stuffings for wild birds, or even steaming it into sweets like puffed rice, or rice pudding sweetened with maple syrup. In the United States, the main producers are California and Minnesota (where it is the official state grain), and it is mainly cultivated in paddy fields. In Canada, it is usually harvested from natural bodies of water; the largest producer is Saskatchewan. Wild rice is also produced in Hungary and Australia. In Hungary, cultivation started in 1989. Manchurian wild rice Manchurian wild rice (), gathered from the wild, was once an important grain in ancient China. It is now very rare in the wild, and its use as a grain has completely disappeared in China, though it continues to be cultivated for its stems. Like true rice, it does not contain gluten. It is also a good source of certain minerals and B vitamins. One cup of cooked wild rice provides 5% or more of the daily value of thiamin, riboflavin, iron, and potassium; 10% or more of the daily value of niacin, vitamin B6, folate, magnesium, phosphorus; 15% of zinc; and over 20% of manganese. Dishes in Minnesotan cuisine Wild rice is a common ingredient in Minnesotan cooking, it is a main ingredient in Manoomin porridge, wild rice pancakes, hotdish, wild rice soup, cranberry wild rice bread, and wild rice salad. Safety Wild rice seeds can be infected by the highly toxic fungus ergot, which is dangerous if eaten. Infected grains have pink or purplish blotches or growths of the fungus, from the size of a seed to several times larger. == Archaeology of wild rice ==

Food source Anthropologists since the early 1900s have focused on wild rice as a food source, often with an emphasis on the harvesting of the aquatic plant in the Lake Superior region by the Menominee, Woodland Dakota, and Anishinaabe people, also known as the Chippewa, Ojibwa and Ojibwe. The Smithsonian Institution's Bureau of American Ethnology published The Wild Rice Gatherers in the Upper Great Lakes: A Study in American Primitive Economics by Albert Ernest Jenks in 1901. In addition to his fieldwork interviewing members of various tribal communities, Jenks examined the accounts of explorers, fur traders and government agents from the early 1600s to the late 1800s to detail an "aboriginal economic activity which is absolutely unique, and in which no article is employed not of aboriginal conception and workmanship". His study further notes wild rice's importance in the fur-trading era because the region would have been nearly inaccessible if not for the availability of wild rice and the ability to store it for long periods of time. Processing by various cultures The continued use of wild rice from ancient to modern times has provided opportunities to examine the plant's processing by various cultures through the archaeological record they left behind during their occupation of seasonal ricing camps. Early ethnographic reports, tribal accounts and historical writings also inform archaeological research in the human use of wild rice. For example, geographer and ethnologist Henry Schoolcraft in the mid-1800s wrote about depressions in the ground on the shore of a lake with wild rice growing in the water. He wrote that wild rice processors placed animal hides in the holes, filled them with rice and stomped on the rice to thresh it. Despite the close association of the Anishinaabe and wild rice today, indigenous use of this food for subsistence also predates their arrival in the Lake Superior region. The Anishinaabe today were part of a larger Algonquian group who left eastern North America on a centuries-long journey to the west along the St. Lawrence River and Great Lakes. The Anishinaabe migration story details a vision to follow a giant clam shell in the sky to a place where the food grows on the water. This journey ended between the late 1400s and early 1600s in the Lake Superior wild rice country when they encountered the plant. Prehistory Archaeological and other scientific investigations have focused on the prehistoric exploitation of wild rice by humans, including: • the Menominee, named by the Anishinaabe for their intensive focus on wild rice harvesting, • the Anishinaabe, • the so-called proto-Anishinaabe, who may have later transformed into this culture from an earlier form, • other indigenous groups who exist today, such as the Sioux people, and • archaeological-categorized cultures from the Initial and Terminal Woodland periods, whose living lineages today are more difficult to identify. A seminal 1969 archaeological study indicated the prehistoric nature of indigenous wild rice harvesting and processing through radiocarbon dating, putting to rest the argument made by some European-Americans that wild rice production did not begin until post-contact times. Researchers tested clay linings of thermal features and jigging pits associated with parching and threshing of the plant. But a more precise dating of the antiquity of human use of wild rice and the appearance of the plant itself in lakes and streams have been the subjects of continuing academic debates. These disputes may be framed around these questions: When did wild rice first appear in various areas of the region? When was it plentiful enough to be harvested in quantities to be a significant food source? What is the relationship of wild rice to the introduction of pottery and to increases in indigenous populations in the past 2,000 years? "The use of wild rice by and its influence on prehistoric people in northeast Minnesota has led to much argument among archaeologists and paleoecologists". As an example, archaeologists divide human occupation of northeast Minnesota into numerous time periods. They are: • the Paleo-Indian period from 7,000 years ago (5000 BC) extending back to an uncertain time, after the glaciers receded from the last Ice Age; • the Archaic period, from 2,500 to 7,000 years ago (5000–500 BC); • the Initial Woodland period, from 2,500 to 1,300 years ago (500 BC–700 AD); • the Terminal Woodland period, from 1,300 to 400 years ago (700–1600 AD); and • the historical period after that time. After European contact, indigenous wild rice processors generally abandoned ceramic vessels in favor of metal kettles. Woodland period The Initial Woodland period in northeast Minnesota marks the beginning of the use of pottery and burial mound building in the archaeological record. The Initial Woodland also experienced an increase in indigenous population. One hypothesis is that wild rice as a food source was related to these three developments. An example of a northeast Minnesota wild rice location, the Big Rice site in the Superior National Forest, considered a classic Initial and Terminal Woodland period type site, illustrates the methods of archaeological investigations into the plant's use by humans through time. Archaeological techniques along with ethnographic records and tribal oral testimony, when taken together, suggest use of this particular lakeside site since 50 BCE. On its own, accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) radiocarbon dating of wild rice seeds and charcoal samples from the Big Rice itself indicated indigenous use of this site dating to 2,050 years ago. Furthermore, all excavation levels that solely contained ceramics only used during the Initial Woodland period (known as Laurel pottery complex) also included wild rice seeds. This indicated the use of wild rice during the Initial Woodland period, according to the study. Excavators have documented more than 50,000 pottery shards from the site from the Initial and Terminal Woodland periods. Specifically, researchers analyzed ceramic rimsherds of Laurel pottery from the Initial Woodland period and Blackduck, Sandy Lake and Selkirk pottery styles from the Terminal Woodland period. Each pottery type had wild rice seeds associated with it in the soil layers of archaeological deposits. These soil layers were not contaminated with pottery from other eras. This suggests intensive exploitation of the site for wild rice processing through these time periods by different cultures. For example, archaeologists often associate Sandy Lake pottery with the Sioux people, who were later displaced by the Anishinaabe and possibly other Algonquian migrants. Archaeologists often associate Selkirk pottery with the Cree people, an Algonquian group. An examination of the pollen sequence at Big Rice indicates that wild rice existed in "harvestable quantities" 3,600 years ago during the Archaic period. This date is 1,600 years before the AMS radiocarbon date of human-processed charred wild rice seeds at the site during the Initial Woodland period, although there is no archaeological evidence of human use of the wild rice at the site that far back in time as of yet. == See also ==