one for kathy

g.w. beadle, and no doubt some of his acolytes, maintained that teosinte could be popped like popcorn...kathy and i tried this in, i believe, in late 2009 when we got our first tesointe seeds and had limited success...i have been hauling in teosinte seed this morning and i decided to try it with fresh seed...perhaps too fresh...i took twenty-two seeds and some hot vegetable oil to see what would happen..what happened mostly is the seeds turned a golden brown...however i did hear a single pop as i was frying them and when i had a look it turns out one seed case actually did split...so are the seeds too fresh? the cases too soft and permeable to allow adequate pressure to build up inside the seed? don't know...and while i don't want to commit too much seed to this my thinking is that i will let the seeds i brought in today air dry for a week and choose some to try with again next weekend...if it works there will be dancing in the street..if not, the rest of the seed is going to be used to try to grow a second generation...it's all fun and games until someone loses an eye to flying seed cases..then it's time to settle down to business.