profusion of silks = tandem ears

things are a bit less murky in the plant room tonight...the profusion of potato vines that have come from the seed i germinated ( top photo ) continue to thrive ( there have been three casualties...the original fifteen are now twelve )...the plants are producing more and more stolons which i am continuing to "hill" in hopes of stimulating the setting of tubers...we'll see...when i turned the grow light on over the teosinte something that seemed odd became much clearer...the explosion of silks on the top ear was odd until it became obvious that there is more than one ear exiting the stem at the top leaf node...tandem ears = enough silks for two ears ( second and third photos )...there are multiple silks on the lower ear as well ( fourth photo ) so i wonder if there is another ear brewing there as well...with limited stem space on an unnaturally short teosinte plant ( grown in unnatural conditions indoors that is no surprise ) the plant seems to be trying to increase it chances of passing on its dna by producing multiple ears from leaf nodes...that happens outdoors as well so it may just be a function of this plant's genes rather than the environment ( can you tell i have been reading e.o. wilson )...whatever the cause i am more than pleased to see multiple ears on this plant..still waiting for the seeds outdoors to germinate...not much else to tell...gave the garlic in the back yard a good mulching with straw and compost today and soaked some eastern gamagrass seeds that arrived yesterday for a couple of hours in hydrogen peroxide to break dormancy and planted them in peat pots to hopefully germinate...with the campus gamagrass gone it is time to establish a new bunch in an environment i have far more control over and get back to charting the behavior of native plants relative to climate...garlic appeared two days earlier this year than last...is that significant? possibly...but only if the garlic continues to arrive earlier and earlier ...and it isn't native...local perennials are what i am after for that particular project...i'll take annuals like purslane and lamb's quarters too...but i'd rather look at perennials...more as this all moves along.