After milling, white rice contaminated with perennial wild red rice appears dirty or requires additional milling, resulting in more broken grains and reducing the value of the crop. Native to Asia. Sometimes more vigorous than commercial rice, but usually difficult to distinguish. Tufted to 20 cm in diameter, often with rhizomes . Lower stems spongy, floating, rooting at the nodes.
Margins minutely serrate.
Sheaths open, often inflated in the lower portion. Auricles lacking or 1-7 mm long, narrow, curved, glabrous or lined with long hairs to 2 mm long. Roots fibrous, often with rhizomes . Spikelets early deciduous from above the vestigial glumes. Glumes reduced to minute ridges on the stalk.