Indian Corn

by AnnaJo Vahle

Title

Indian Corn

Artist

AnnaJo Vahle

Medium

Photograph - Photography

Description

While visiting a friend in Murphy, North Carolina, I photographed some things that we saw at a produce stand.
Thanksgiving decorations typically include some colorful ears of dried corn, commonly referred to as “Indian corn.”

When Columbus took maize (Zea mays) across the Atlantic to Europe, he might have referred to it as the chief crop of the Indians; therefore, it was Indian corn.

The history of maize is, well, a-maizing. The corn we know today is the most domesticated of all crops. It can’t survive on its own; it has too be managed by man. Rice and wheat have naturally wild versions of themselves that still grow in nature, but there is no wild corn, it is purely man-made.

The earliest corn-like plant was called teosinte. It's a grain plant with very small, vertical kernels. This plant was bred with something else, maybe gamagrass, and over time became early maize. Early maize was then bred back to teosinte, and the cob emerged. A recent article from Florida State shows that corn was being bred and harvested as early as 5300 BCE.

The early plants were quite variable, growing from 2 to 20 feet tall. The ears, when they developed, were small and had only eight rows of kernels. More breeding took place, especially when the plants were brought north. At that time, ears grew near the top of the plant, and the growing season in the north was too short to allow full development.

Maize is a grass. Corn grows about 1 node unit for each full moon; the Indians needed a corn that would mature in just three moon cycles. So they planted kernels from stalks that had the lowest ears, thereby selecting for plants they could harvest before it got too cold. Their selection was for size and production, but colors came along for the ride.

One of the first misconceptions we have to get out of the way is that corn is actually corn. The word corn doesn’t literally refer to the stuff on the cob we eat in the summer and the stuff we pop on a cold afternoon. What we call corn is much more accurately called maize.

The word "corn" comes from an old german/french word. In most uses before the 1600’s, corn meant the major crop for one particular area or region. In England, corn meant wheat; in Scotland or Ireland, it most likely means oats. And by the way - yes, grains are types of fruits.

Turns out corn comes in far more colors than I ever imagined. You can also find it in calico (or speckled corn), magenta, red, scarlet, pink, yellow, orange, bright blue, dark blue, light blue, black, purple, maroon, brown, white, and even cream.

As it happens, before human selection interfered, corn ears were all multi-colored. Kernels are siblings housed on the same ear, meaning that each kernel has its own set of genes, including those that control color.

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October 4th, 2019

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