Pod corn or wild maize is a variety of
maize
Maize (; ''Zea mays''), also known as corn in North American English, is a tall stout grass that produces cereal grain. It was domesticated by indigenous peoples in southern Mexico about 9,000 years ago from wild teosinte. Native American ...
(corn).
It is not a wild ancestor of maize but rather a mutant that forms leaves around each kernel.
Pod corn (''tunicata'' Sturt) is not grown commercially, but it is preserved in some localities.
Pod corn forms
glume
In botany, a glume is a bract (leaf-like structure) below a spikelet in the inflorescence (flower cluster) of grass
Poaceae ( ), also called Gramineae ( ), is a large and nearly ubiquitous family (biology), family of monocotyledonous flow ...
s around each kernel which is caused by a mutation at the
Tunicate locus. Because of its bizarre appearance, pod corn has had a religious significance to certain Native American tribes.
The six major types of corn are
dent corn,
flint corn, pod corn,
popcorn,
flour corn, and
sweet corn.
[Linda Campbell Franklin, "Corn," in Andrew F. Smith (ed.), ''The Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America''. 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013 (pp. 551–558), p. 553.]
References
Maize
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