Gu Ya

Setaria italica, foxtail millet, is an annual warm-season cereal grass of the family Poaceae, cultivated for at least eight thousand years across northern China and now grown throughout temperate and subtropical regions for grain and fodder. It is an erect tufted grass 60 to 150 cm tall, with hollow culms and flat, linear-lanceolate leaf blades 10 to 30 cm long bearing ciliate ligules. The inflorescence is a dense, cylindrical, often somewhat lobed or interrupted spike-like panicle 10 to 30 cm long, with bristly involucres surrounding each spikelet, giving the head its bristly foxtail appearance. The small, ovoid, hard caryopses (grains) ripen yellow, orange, reddish, or blackish depending on variety. For Gu Ya, the cleaned ripe grain is soaked in water until short rootlets emerge, then carefully dried, yielding sprouted (germinated) millet.