[Overview]
A perennial 60–180 cm tall.
It is treated as an annual.
The stem is tubular with many nodes, and each node bears one long, narrow leaf.
There is a ligule at the base of the leaf.
The inflorescence reaches 40 cm in length and hangs down.
The spikelets are 6–10 mm long, and the tip of the lemma is minutely pointed to long-awned.
Besides the distinction between non-glutinous rice and glutinous rice, there are also colored rices such as black rice.
[History]
The ancestor is thought to be Oryza perennis, distributed in Southeast to South Asia.
It had arrived in Japan by the Yayoi period.