Nuo Mi

Oryza sativa var. glutinosa is the glutinous or “sticky” rice cultivar group of the cultivated rice species in the grass family Poaceae. It is an erect annual grass 0.6–1.5 m tall with hollow, jointed culms, linear leaves, and a terminal panicle of spikelets each bearing a single floret. The polished caryopsis (grain) is short and opaque-white due to a starch composition rich in amylopectin and very low in amylose, which makes the cooked rice sticky and cohesive. Grown throughout warm Asia in flooded paddies, it has been cultivated for millennia. In Chinese medicine the unpolished or polished grain (Nuo Mi) is sweet and slightly warm, tonifying middle-jiao Qi, harmonizing the stomach, generating fluids, and astringing sweat and urine; it is used for spontaneous sweating, diarrhea, and Qi deficiency.