Benga Wild Rice

MEDICINAL PROPERTIES
A floatinf glabrous aquatic grass with culms 30 45 cm long, diffusely branched, rooting in dense masses at the nodes, leaves liner or ovate-oblong. Obtuse with smooth or slightly scaberulous margins, base subcordate, sheathes smooth, inflated, somewhat auricled at the mouth with ciliate margins, ligule narrow, membranous, spikelets in panicles, rachis and branches, slender, stiff, floral gloom lanceolate with 5 strong nerves, tapering into awn; grains narrowly oblong, free within the lemma and palea.
The roots and seeds are sweet, acrid, cooling, diuretic, emollient, constipating and tonic. They are useful in strangury, diarrhoea, otopathy, vitiated conditions of pitta, burning sensation, hyperpiesia, and general debility.