Oryza sativa Seeds | Jasmine Rice
LATIN NAME: Oryza sativa
COMMON NAME: Jasmine Rice
Plant Profile
Jasmine Rice (Oryza sativa) grows as a fast-growing, annual in the grass family. Jasmine rice tilts slender, green culms over flooded field, fine, nodding heads above them, and the whole crop carries the soft, golden look of the warm paddy. It is a plant of open, sunny, flooded, rich, warm ground. While it flowers, it feeds a quiet procession of bees and hoverflies. Taken as a whole, it is a plant that repays a little attention many times over.
Science & Biotechnology
Oryza sativa sits in the grass family, a group that keeps botanists, horticulturists and plant breeders busy with questions of classification, adaptation and ornamental potential. Breeders and collectors still work with it, so well-kept seed remains available.
Uses & Benefits
In the garden, Jasmine Rice earns its place in borders, containers and mixed plantings, and it also rewards growers who raise plants for cutting, drying or kitchen use. Jasmine rice is a soft, useful plant of warm paddy and study collection. It is a soft, useful plant of open, sunny, flooded, rich, warm ground. Rice seeds are happy in a fine, silty soil kept wet and warm. It establishes readily and then requires nothing out of the ordinary.
Rice feeds half the world, and its forms carry medicine: rice germ and bran supply gamma-oryzanol and vitamin E, red yeast rice contains natural monacolins, and sprouted brown rice is a studied functional food.
Growing from Seed
Seed is the natural starting point for Jasmine Rice, and the process is uncomplicated. Use a fine, free-draining seed compost, scatter the seed evenly, cover it lightly and hold it just moist in good light. Transplant the sturdiest seedlings to their permanent spots and let them develop without disturbance.
Our Take
It forms a fast-growing, annual, which makes spacing and siting straightforward. Being a fast-growing, annual, it asks for a permanent spot and repays it yearly. Attention to moisture in the first weeks pays off; later, the plant is forgiving.
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