[Sca-cooks] article on rice - a little late period

[devra at aol.com]

>From the Fall/Winter 2010 quarterly newsletter of the Brooklyn Botanic Garden

Lost Plant Found?

There are only two species of cultivated rice in the world: Oryza glaberrima (African rice) and O. sativa (Asian rice.) Even though historical records indicate that African rice was at one time grown in several regions of the Americas, it is now almost unknown except in Africa, near where it originated--and Asian rice is displacing it even there.

Careful detective work has recently led to the discovery in the Republic of Suriname (in northwestern South America) of what appears to be rice descended from the African rice that was brought to the New World with African slaves.  Small quantities of O. glaberrima are sold there for ritual use, and some of this rare rice has even been exported to the Netherlands for sale in shops catering to immigrants from Suriname.

Prior to the introduction of Asian rice to the U.S. in the late 1600s, African rice was the only rice species grown by slaves in South Carolina. Perhaps gardeners in South Carolina could grow African rice as an "heirloom" crop!

(Source: T. Van Andel, 'African Rice (Oryza glabberima, Steud.) Lost crop of the Enslaved Africans Discovered in Suriname." Economic Botany, March 2010, pp1010 (NY Botnaical Garden Press)

So I guess that all those strange red and purple and green rices are just strains of the one species.  Now I'm worrying about a blight wiping out the species, the way we nearly lost our corn a few years ago....

Devra