Millet and Jik, Jik is the millet.

Millet and Jik, it is easy to confuse us modern people, in fact, millet is yellow rice, also known as rhubarb rice, slightly larger particles, sticky; Jik is millet, also known as yellow millet, slightly smaller particles, non-sticky. We usually eat the most common, the most readily available, and the most commonly bought is millet, or jik.

For the origin of Jigen, Chinese and foreign scholars have three kinds of claims: one is originated in India, the second is originated in Egypt, the third is originated in China, the first two views are not currently sufficient factual basis. It is known that China is the earliest and richest country in the world in terms of archaeological discovery of Jik, with the middle reaches of the Yellow River as the center, and the remains of Jik have been found in the neolithic sites from Xinjiang in the west to Heilongjiang Province in the east, which proves that China is the center of the origin of Jik.

Morphological features of millet

An annual cultivated herb. Culms robust, erect, 40-120 cm tall, solitary or few tufted, sometimes branched, nodes densely covered with moustache hairs, sub-nodes covered with warty hairs. Leaf sheaths loose, covered with warty hairs; ligules membranous, ca. 1 mm, apical lashes ca. 2 mm; leaf blades linear or linear-lanceolate, 10-30 cm long, 5-20 mm wide, both surfaces warty-villous or glabrous, apices acuminate, bases subrounded, margins often scabrous.

The panicle is spreading or denser, pendulous at maturity, 10-30 cm long, branches thick or slender, furrowed, margins hispid, lower bare, upper densely covered with branchlets and spikelets; spikelets ovate-elliptic, 4-5 mm long; glumes papery, glabrous, the first glume deltoid, ca. 1/2-2/3 as long as the spikelet, apical tip pointed or awl-pointed, usually 5-7-veined; the second glume as long as the spikelet, usually with 11 veins. The second glume is as long as the spikelet, usually 11-veined, with the veins converging apically into a rostrum.