pod corn = zea

this pod corn plant ( top photo ) was in the community garden until about an hour ago ( i brought it home because i had no real way to clean off the root system and i didn't have a photo graphic scale either )...like every other maize plant in the garden it had been nailed by squirrels...it was broken in half and the eat is literally chewed up ( second photo )...evolutionary mutant or not it is still recognizably a member of the zea family...not only by the morphology of its leaves and the production of thickly husked ears ( like corn rather than the fragile husks teosinte produces ) but by the mass of support roots ( third photo ) it uses to give the stalk stability...every zea plant i have ever seen from maize to dense yellow #2 to teosinte has these structures and they are here in abundance...the bottom photo is of the root system with a scale to give an idea of depth...as an annual the roots are a bit shallower than a perennial...no need to go below the frost line to winter over...there will be more plants removed in the next few weekends as we prepare the garden for winter.