Jungle Rice

Echinochloa colona is a widespread, weedy species, distinguished by its short, neat, usually rather openly spaced racemes of rounded, awnless spikelets.

Panicum colona (Jungle rice, Deccan Grass, Millet Rice, Corn Panic Grass) can usually be recognised by the short, distant, neatly 4-rowed racemes; less constant characters are the small round awnless spikelets with soft indumentum. However, there is a certain amount of variation, and forms with elliptic pointed spikelets tend to intergrade with Panicum crusgalli.

The epithet is sometimes treated as the irregular genitive plural of a noun (“of the fanners”) and spelt colonum. However, there seems no reason to depart from the adjectival form familiar to botanists; though not in the purest classical tradition, its use was sanctioned by lexicographers of Linnaeus’ own time.

Panicum colon is considered to be one of the finest fodder grasses and is eagerly eaten by cattle both before and after flowering. Aitchison (fide Duthie) reported last century that it was cultivated in Jhelum district.

Annuals; culm glabrous, 20-80 cm long, decumbent, branched from basal nodes. Blade 6-15 cm long, 3-8 mm wide, margins scabrous; sheath slightly keeled, shorter than internode; ligule absent. Panicle 5-15 cm long, racemes distantly spaced on central axis, 1-2 cm long. Spikelets hispid, 2-3 mm long, awnless or minutely awned; glumes and lower lemma glabrous to scabrous-pubescent, veins scabroushispid; lower glume 1/3 to 1/2 as long as spikelet, 3-veind; upper glume subequal to lower lemma, mucronate to awn-pointed, 5-veined, flattened abaxially, enclosing a hyaline palea of equal length; upper lemma rounded abaxially, smooth and shining; anther ca. 0.8 mm long.

Annual. Culms erect or ascending, up to 60 cm or more tall. Leaf sheaths compressed and keeled; leaf blades linear, flat, 3–20 × 0.3–0.7 cm, glabrous, sometimes with transverse purple bands, margins slightly scabrous, apex acute. Inflorescence narrow, 5–10 cm; racemes 1–2 cm, erect or sometimes stiffly diverging, simple, separated or overlapping by up to half their length or more, rachis usually without long, tubercle-based hairs, spikelets tightly congested in 4 neat rows. Spikelets plumply ovate-oblong, 2–3 mm, hirtellous, sharply acute; lower glume ca. 1/2 as long as spikelet; lower lemma staminate or sterile; upper lemma whitish at maturity, elliptic. Fl. and fr. summer and autumn. 2n = 36.

Annual; culms 10-100 cm high, erect or ascending. Leaf-blades 5-30 cm long. 2-8 mm wide, occasionally marked with purple bars; ligule absent; sheaths glabrous. Inflorescence typically linear, 1-15 cm long, the racemes neatly 4-rowed, seldom over 3 cm long, simple, commonly ± half their length apart and appressed to the axis but sometimes subverticillate and spreading. Spikelets ovate-elliptic to subglobose, 1.5-3 mm long, pubescent; lower lemma acute to cuspidate (rarely with a subulate point up to 1 mm long); upper lemma 2-3 mm long.

Widely spread in the tropics of Asia & Africa.

Tropical Asia and Africa. Taiwan, common in roadside, abonded fields and ochards.

Distribution: Pakistan (Sind, Baluchistan, Punjab, N.W.F.P. & Kashmir); through-out the tropics and subtropics.

600-2400 m

Fl. & Fr. Per.: May -September

A weed of damp places and irrigated fields. Anhui, Fujian, Guangdong, Guangxi, Guizhou, Hainan, Hebei, Henan, Hubei, Hunan, Jiangsu, Jiangxi, Shaanxi, Sichuan, Taiwan, Xinjiang, Xizang, Yunnan, Zhejiang [warm regions throughout the world].

Panicum colonum L., Syst. Nat. ed. 10. 2: 870. 1759.

Panicum colonum Linnaeus, Syst. Nat., ed. 10, 2: 870. 1759; Echinochloa crusgalli (Linnaeus) P. Beauvois subsp. colona (Linnaeus) Honda; Milium colonum (Linnaeus) Moench; Oplismenus colonus (Linnaeus) Kunth; P. crusgalli subsp. colonum (Linnaeus) Makino & Nemoto.

Annuals, Aquatic, leaves emergent, Terrestrial, not aquatic, Stems nodes swollen or brittle, Stems erect or ascending, Stems geniculate, decumbent, or lax, sometimes rooting at nodes, Stems caespitose, tufted, or clustered, Stems terete, round in cross section, or polygonal, Stem internodes solid or spongy, Stem internodes hollow, Stems with inflorescence less than 1 m tall, Stems, culms, or scapes exceeding basal leaves, Leaves mostly cauline, Leaves conspicuously 2-ranked, distichous, Leaves sheathing at base, Leaf sheath mostly open, or loose, Leaf sheath smooth, glabrous, Leaf sheath and blade diffe rentiated, Leaf blades linear, Leaf blades 2-10 mm wide, Leaf blades mostly flat, Leaf blade with prominently raised or widened midvein, Leaf blades mostly glabrous, Inflorescence terminal, Inflorescence a contracted panicle, narrowly paniculate, branches appressed or ascending, Inflorescence solitary, with 1 spike, fascicle, glomerule, head, or cluster per stem or culm, Inflorescence a panicle with narrowly racemose or spicate branches, Inflorescence with 2-10 branches, Inflorescence branches more than 10 to numerous, Rachis angular, Flowers bisexual, Spikelets sessile or subsessile, Spikelets dorsally compressed or terete, Spikelet less than 3 mm wide, Spikelets with 1 fertile floret, Spikelets with 2 florets, Spikelet with 1 fertile floret and 1-2 sterile florets, Spikelets paired at rachis nodes, Spikelets all alike and fertille, Spikelets in paired units, 1 sessile, 1 pedicellate, Spikelets bisexual, Spikelets disarticulating below the glumes, Spikelets secund, in rows on one side of rachis, Rachilla or pedicel glabrous, Glumes present, empty bracts, Glumes 2 clearly present, Glumes distinctly unequal, Glumes shorter than adjacent lemma, Glumes equal to or longer than adjacent lemma, Glumes awned, awn 1-5 mm or longer, Glumes keeled or winged, Glume surface hairy, villous or pilose, Glumes 4-7 nerved, Lemma coriaceous, firmer or thicker in texture than the glumes, Lemma becoming indurate, enclosing palea and caryopsis, Lemma 5-7 nerved, Lemma glabrous, Lemma apex acute or acuminate, Lemma awnless, Lemma margins inrolled, tightly covering palea and caryopsis, Lemma straight, Palea present, well developed, Palea longer than lemma, Palea 2 nerved or 2 keeled, Stamens 3, Styles 2-fid, deeply 2-branched, Stigmas 2, Fruit - caryopsis.

Echinochloa colona, commonly known as jungli / wild rice, deccan grass, jharua or awnless barnyard grass, is a type of wild grass originating from tropical Asia. It was formerly classified as a species of Panicum. It is the wild ancestor of the cultivated cereal crop Echinochloa frumentacea, sawa millet. Some taxonomists treat the two taxa as one species, in which case the domesticated forms may also be referred to as E. colona.