http://ohioline.osu.edu/agf-fact/0128.html
Being a city boy, I kind of had the right idea, but couldn’t figure out one detail. The tassel of the corn plant spews out the pollen, but in order for the kernels to form, they have to be pollinated – but the kernels are deep inside the husk. How does the male pollen get to the females to create little baby corns?
The answer is pretty amazing – the silk are hollow tubes, each one connected to one future kernel. When the pollen lands on the silk, it immediately starts growing – moving through the silk until it reaches the female flower and makes it pregnant 😉
Once fertilized, that silk turns brown and detaches its job is done. So uniform brown silk is a sign of a fully pollinated ear of corn inside.
But these days, with hybrid corn, irrgation and pesticides, I don’t remember getting bad ears of corn, but I do remember it as a child in the 1960s
Good analysis of the way corn grows and matures. I remember in the early to mid-1980’s Japanese Beetles became a big problem. They loved flowers petals, certain tree leaves like Sassafrass and corn silk. When they 1st arrived there were no natural predators or fungal plants to attack them to keep them under control. Many farmers and gardeners had near total crop losses of their corn plantings due to the beetles eating the corn silk when it began to emerge from the plant.
After the initial beetle invasion and devastation we tilled a specific fungas into the dirt that attacked their larve and that controlled them for the past 20 years. But, they are making a come-back.
When I was staying on the 43rd floor of my friend’s condo on the lakefront, he told me on the outside of the windows, each year it alternates between Japanese beetles and big spiders. This is big spider year.
Insects will be around a lot longer than humans Unless they start spending their lives watching TV…
Pretty amazing how nature works. And then there is the hover-fly that hangs out at the corn to and attacks that Corn worm. I seem to remember my Grand-dad telling me back in West Virginia, when I was a kid, why my Grandma planted Sunflowers in between the rows of corn, to attract the hover fly.
Yeah I don’t like the genetic engineered plants either Art.
Thanks
‘Free range’ Parrott