Rice

Cultivated all over the Island.

This is the staple cereal rice, widely cultivated in tropical and warm-temperate parts of the world, and with many different cultivated races. It has the AA genome, and where Oryza rufipogon occurs as a weed in rice fields, intermediates may occur.

Tufted annual or short-lived perennial; ligules ovate to lanceolate, 10-20 mm long, margins decurrent to the sheath; leaf-blades cauline; linear, 25-80 cm long, 5-30 mm wide. Panicle open, loose, pendent when fruiting. Spikelets flattened, elliptic, 6-10 mm long; glumes minute, vestigial lemmas subulate, glabrous, 2-4 mm long; fertile lemma 5-nerved, hard, hispidulous, as long as spikelet; palea same texture and length as lemma, 3-nerved. Grain 5 mm long.

Annual, aquatic, tufted. Culms erect, rooting at lower submerged nodes, 0.5–1.5 m tall. Leaf sheaths slightly inflated below, upper sheaths tight, glabrous, auricles falcate, ciliate; leaf blades 25–60 × 0.5–2 cm, glabrous, smooth or scabrid on both sides, margins scabrid, apex acuminate; ligule 10–40 mm. Panicle loosely contracted, up to 30 cm, nodding at maturity; branches 1–3 at lowest node, longest 2–12 cm, axils bearded or glabrous. Spikelets oblong to oblong-lanceolate, 7–10 mm, length 2–3.5 times width, persistent; sterile lemmas lanceolate, 1.5–4 mm, apex acuminate; fertile lemma papillose, spinulose, apex acuminate; awn very variable, slender or stout, up to 60 mm or more, scaberulous, sometimes absent. Anthers 1–3 mm. Caryopsis ovate or elliptic to cylindrical, 5–7 mm, whitish yellow to brown or blackish. 2n = 24.

is extensively cultivated wherever there is enough water, up to an altitude of c. 2000 m. The chief crop is in Kashmir (Liddar Valley). Tateoka reports that this species is native in India and Indo-China but cultivated throughout the warmer parts of southern Europe, Africa, Asia, Australia and Central and South America. There are numerous cultivars of Rice, their most extensive taxonomic treatment being that of Porteres in J. Agric. trop. 3: 341, 541, 627, 821. 1956.

Widely cultivated.

200-1200 m

Cultivated, mainly in flooded fields. Throughout most of China [domesticated in SE Asia].

Oryza formosana Masamune & Suzuki; O. sativa var. for-mosana (Masamune & Suzuki) Yeh & Henderson.