Oryza
(derived from the Arabic name, Eruz). Rice. SYN. Padia. ORD. Gramineae. A genus of stove, marsh-loving, rather tall grasses, all East Indian. Nearly twenty species have been described; scarcely five, however, are at all distinct, and these may probably be reduced to varieties of O. sativa. Spikelets flat-compressed, one-flowered; glumes four, the two outer ones very small, scale or bristle-like; the two upper ones complicate-carinate; panicle terminal, narrow; branches slender, erect, sub-flexuous, often long and slightly branched. Leaves long and flat. O. sativa, the well-known rice of commerce, supplies food for a greater number of human beings than are fed on the produce of any other known plant. It is the principal, and often the only, food of the inhabitants of China, India, and the islands of the Malayan Archipelago. The plants have no horticultural value. They are easily grown, and do best when the pots are plunged in tanks in which tropical aquatics are cultivated.