Identifying fossil wild rice (Zizania) pollen from Cootes Paradise, Ontario: a new approach using scanning electron microscopy

Although prehistoric native peoples probably used wild rice for food and ceremony, evidence is sparse. Macrofossil remains of wild rice are uncommon on archaeological sites even where the plant is still common nearby. The association between documented human habitation and wild rice is explored with pollen records from associated wild rice wetlands. For this, reliable identification of wild rice pollen is essential. Three approaches are examined: (1) the pollen spectral signature (percentage and density of grass pollen), (2) coeval community pollen types, and (3) the pollen morphology (size and sculpturing) of wild rice versus other stand-forming wetland grasses. We report pollen spectra from a contemporary wild rice marsh and compare it with fossil pollen from Cootes Paradise, a wetland at the western end of Lake Ontario. The pollen signature from the modern wild rice wetlands was similar to that of the fossil site, but this correspondence does not confirm that the fossil grass pollen is wild rice. Wild rice pollen is separable by size from that of all the stand-forming wetland grasses examined, but the fossil pollen from Bull’s Point is not the same size as that of modern wild rice. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM), however, indicates that wild rice pollen is identifiable by its sculpturing and that the fossil pollen has an identical micromorphology. 2003 Published by Elsevier Ltd.