Corn

(“Indian”) Corn (Z. mays) Dehydrated Flora. Condition: Fair to poor. Origin: North Eastern Woodlands. Age: unknown.

One female inflorescence with up to 1,000 ovules and styles [silks] or potential kernels. Illustrating the genetic ancestor, now extinct for common domesticated corn. Mangelsdorf’s “tripartite theory” on the sexual synthesis, or evolutionary immutability, of North American varieties, is implied.

Taxonomic Controversy

“As a corn breeder [Mangelsdorf] had experimented with a third kindred grass, Tripsacum, and with his Texas colleague Robert Reeves had in 1939 formulated a “tripartite theory” to prove that “the ancestor of cultivated corn was corn.” (Fussell, p. 79)

He speculated that there must once have been a wild corn, now extinct, and that a hybrid of this wild pod popcorn mated with Tripsacum to become the parents of teosinte. He concluded that a gene mix of these three related grasses evolved into our modern races of corn.

References

• Betty Fussell, The Story of Corn. New York City, 1992.
• P.C. Mangelsdorf, Corn: Its Origin, Evolution, and Improvement. Cambridge, 1974.
• _____, and R. G. Reeves, "The Origin of Indian Corn and Its Relatives." Bulletin. 574. Texas Agricultural Experiment Station, 1939.

The opposing view is presented in:

• H. H. Iltis, “From Teosinte to Maize: The Catastrophic Sexual Transmutation.” Science. no. 4626;222. 25 Nov., 1983

fl;900 bce–1997;an