Hello and welcome to your better-late-than-never Daily Fun Fact From Flora , This fact is going to be brief and beautiful.

Now you may remember we spoke about rice a bit last week. Rice is unusual as crops go because almost all rice is used for human consumption — either directly as rice or it’s made into noodles, flour, rice cakes, rice krispies, rice pudding, syrup, risotto, vinegar (seriously so many rice food products exist).

The husks, stems and stalks are not very nutritionally viable and don’t break down very easily.

Wheat stems can be used as straw and maize is mulched to make animal food. Rice husks — not so much.

In Southeast Asia you can occasionally find rice hull burners which use rice husks as a form of biofuel, but they aren’t super common.

INSTEAD — what they are used for is fireworks.

Every “dot” of colour that you see in a firework is a rice husk covered in gunpowder (and a metal salt to make a pretty colour) that has then been set on fire. They are literally used as main bursting charge in aerial fireworks shells.

I KNOW.

What a world we live in.

Lots of love,

Flora