Main Page | See live article | Alphabetical index The substance known as rice paper in Europe due to the mistaken notion that it is made from rice consists of the pith of a small tree, Aralia papyrifera, which grows in the swampy forests of Taiwan. The cylindrical core of pith is rolled on a hard flat surface against a knife, by which it is cut into thin sheets of a fine ivory-like texture. Dyed in various colors, rice paper is extensively used for the preparation of artificial flowers, while the white sheets are employed by native artists for watercolor drawings. References This article incorporates text from the public domain 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica. Please update as needed. This article is from Wikipedia. All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.