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Planting
Days to maturity
Seasonal yields
Sow indoors · Direct sow · Transplant outdoors
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Plant · P-684
Northern Wild Rice
Zizania palustris
Northern Wild Rice is an aquatic annual grass whose grain has been a dietary staple and namesake for the Ojibwa, who call it manoomin, and the Menominee, who take their name from it, yielding over 500 pounds of seed an acre from an established bed. It needs shallow, slow-moving fresh water, ripens over a two to three week window in late summer, and its seed will not survive drying - it has to be kept wet and cold until sown, and finished grain sold for eating cannot be replanted. A new bed is slow to establish, often taking three to four years to know whether a site will hold it, and both planting and harvesting usually require a permit.
Record at a glance
Growing profile
- Sun
- Full Sun
- USDA zone
- Not yet recorded
- Soil
- Sand · Silt · Loam
- Moisture
- Wet
Vertical layer
Aquatic- Soil pH
- 6–8
- Plant type
- Annual
- Mature height
- 6.6–10 ft
- Mature spread
- Not yet recorded
- Plant spacing
- 6–8 in
- Root type
- Fibrous-shallow
- Spread pattern
- Seed
Keep exploring
Similar plants
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Blue Flag Iris
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Bulrush
Schoenoplectus acutus
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Cattail
Typha latifolia
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Lotus
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Mosquito Fern
Azolla filiculoides
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The deeper layer
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- Primary
- Locked ecological function
- Secondary
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- Byproduct
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Behind the record
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