Rice

Rice is the more widely grown of the two cultivated rice species, a grass of the family Poaceae first domesticated in the Yangtze basin of China many thousands of years ago. Grieve describes an annual whose jointed stems may float in water or lie along the ground, rooting at the joints, and end in a loose head that bows as the seed grows heavy; she thought it native to China and India. Its two main kinds are the sticky, short-grained japonica and the long-grained, non-sticky indica, and the grain may be white, brown, black or red. It is above all a food, and Grieve notes that the peoples who live on it mostly eat it unhusked; she also records a rice-water drink for fevers and a rice poultice used in place of linseed. Kynes, writing of grains together, says rice was used in important rites in Asia and was sometimes thought to have a soul. Cunningham gives it to the Sun and to air, and to protection and fertility: rice on the roof or in a small jar by the door guards a household, Brahmins carried it as an amulet against evil, and it is thrown after newly married couples. For grains, Kynes adds earth, Venus and Virgo, and powers that include abundance, divination, love and prosperity.