The open plant encyclopedia
Snap a photo or search by any name to see how to care for it, where it comes from, whether it's safe, and a 3D model you can turn.
The plants people record most in your country, and ones that grow there wild.
Filter by what you want to do, shape, origin, country, care and safety.
Zizania latifolia
Also called Manchurian wild rice
Manchurian wild rice is a tall, marsh-dwelling grass grown across East Asia, mainly for its swollen smut-galled stems eaten as a vegetable. It is propagated by rhizome, and the key to growing it is keeping its roots wet or submerged.
Zizania latifolia, known as Manchurian wild rice (Chinese: 菰; pinyin: gū or 茭; pinyin: jiāo; POJ: kha; Korean: 줄; RR: jul; Japanese: 真菰 or マコモ makomo), is the only member of the wild rice genus Zizania native to Asia. It is used as a food plant; both the stem and grain are edible. Gathered in the wild wetlands, Manchurian wild rice was an important grain in ancient China. Manchurian wild rice is now very rare in the wild, and its use as a grain has completely disappeared in Asia, though it continues to be cultivated for its stems. A measure of its former popularity is that the surname Jiǎng (simplified Chinese: 蒋; traditional Chinese: 蔣), one of the most common in China, derives from this crop.
Zizania latifolia is often grown as an agricultural crop across Asia, not for its grain as are other wild rice species, but for the stems which are made hosts of the smut fungus Ustilago esculenta infecting them, swelling in hypertrophy into juicy galls. The galled stems are harvested as a vegetable in China (known as jiāobái(sǔn) (traditional Chinese: 茭白(筍); simplified Chinese: 茭白(笋); Pe̍h-ōe-jī: kha-pe̍h-(sún))) and Japan (真菰筍 makomotake). The galled section of the stem is 3 to 4 centimeters (1.2 to 1.6 in) wide and up to 20 centimeters (10 in) long. This vegetable has been grown for at least 400 years. As the smut infection prevents the plant flowering and setting seed, the crop is propagated asexually by rhizome.
The stems on their own are popular for its flavor and tender texture, and it is eaten raw or cooked. Its taste resembles fresh bamboo shoots. It stays crisp when stir-fried. The main harvesting season is between September and November; a typhoon-occuring season in parts of Asia, a time when many other vegetables are unavailable.
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Zizania latifolia by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts and the care summary drawn from them are shared under the same licence.
The care summary was written by AI (Claude, Anthropic) from the sources on this page, with general growing knowledge where they are silent. Check before relying on it.
Life form, climate and native range: World Checklist of Vascular Plants, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (CC BY 3.0), reformatted; see Plants of the World Online.
