maize

"corn carried the stigma of being alien, strange, poor. the wealthy judged corn and declared it to be guilty. the poor, on the contrary, opened their doors to it, embraced it, and adopted it. corn shared the fate of the poor, of those of mixed race, of the unchaste. and corn thrived virtually everywhere." alberto warman "corn and capitalism:how a botanical bastard grew to global dominance."___________________there is maize in both the community garden and in the pgp...a world class "maintenance food" for billions around the globe...which only reinforces warman's point...a staple if ever there was one from the traditional varieties like hopi blue ( first, third, and fourth photos ) which are used for both blue tortilla chips and the traditional hopi "somiviki" or blue corn tamales to the dense yellow number two grown in the fields that border suburbia here and find their way into some seventeen thousand items in your local supermarket...feedstock for industrial food or a staple that provides the energy for the daily activity of people all over...along with the sweet corn in the second photo we are only growing non-industrial varieties that people have used for sustenance for millennia...adaptable and coming in a multitude of varieties it grows on every continent except antarctica and like potatoes first found acceptance outside its native range among the poor...a peculiar plant, maize in its present form is utterly dependent on human intervention...sealed in a husk it cannot seed itself and if humans do not sow the crop from year to year its extinction is almost certain...and still, it is so central to so many food cultures that it has spread its range around the world...leaving me to wonder which is more dependent...maize or the humans that grow it.