zea events

a quiet day out back doesn't mean the season isn't moving along...it is doing what seasons do and the plants are moving along, minding their business...and, for today at least, with no drama...this stand of maize...

three of the dozen or so plants are flowering...so there should be ears soon enough...

each of the branches on this teosinte plant has flowered or is producing its own bloom...

it has ears and seeds that are becoming more pronounced...

and the presence of many more silks tell me the ear and seed populations will be growing...which pleases me...

this teosinte plant has flowered with no visible signs of silks,ears, or seeds as yet...

it appears, however, to be hosting a herd of aphids and their any herders...the growers of teosinte in it s native range plant it along the margins of their maize fields because they say the presence of the wild and weedy ancestor makes their maize "stronger"...they also chew the green seeds for their sweet juices and the aphids seem to be doing the same along the leaves...

finally, this maize plant has no flowers, silks, or ears...

but i did find one of the girls taking a break on one of its broad leaves...she sat for a bit while i unabashedly clicked away at the shutter...and then...just before she lost patience and flew off..she raised a leg in my direction...valediction? or some other sort of gesture? who knows...the bee is the only one sure.

stunted? hybrid? suicide?

the maize in this patch in my back yard is around five feet tall...

this one, a few yards away, is taller than i am ( and has some spiffy support roots going on )...

and the maize in my bed at the community garden is all seven feet or better and in full bloom...

out in the bean field it's a different story...

the volunteer corn there hasn't topped three feet...even though some of it is flowering...

the stalks are clustered together in a bunch on all the volunteer stands...

as if they grew from a clump of kernels left from an ear the combine and the gleaners missed ( like this one from two years ago...before the herbicide got it )...still...last season i put a tape rule on stalks two inches apart that grew to full size and produced...corn plants been engineered to stand being in close proximity to one another unlike buffalo bird woman's heirloom maize...admittedly hybrid seed is mule like in that reproduction for it is not a simple thing...a rarity...and monsanto swears on all that's unholy there is no such thing as a suicide gene in their modified corn ( even though saving it to grow another crop to see is illegal...there is a growers' agreement to adhere to )...so..we will wait around and compare productivity in the field, yard, and community garden ( production the squirrels don't get anyway ) and see what does better...

and the beans you say? "how are the tariffed, twelve billion of my hard earned tax dollar industrial soybeans doing?"..fine...blooming away in acres of fields...

i stuck a camera down under all that green foliage to take a blind photo of what is going on down there...i believe i see pods in this photo...and if they aren't there will be with all those blooms.

different ears...different seeds

the garden is looking green this morning, however the beds were a bit dry so irrigation was called for...which i did thoroughly and then went to have a look around...

the asparagus looks like it should in july...tall and "ferny"...

it has produced another spear ( i have not taken a census yet...last year i believe there were fifty-five...a count next time out ) and, if it all goes well, there will be some seed again this season which is pleasing...

around back the cherry tomatoes are coming along well...and there is a lone remaining potato bloom...the way the blooms have been falling off the plants i am inclined to think there is as little chance of potato fruits here as there is in my yard...not so pleasing...this is gardening however...we are not in control no matter how much we deceive ourselves...

down the row the maize is pushing its season along...tall and flowering...

the one on the east end of the bed is still the tallest ( pardon me for throwing myself in here as much as i have of late..i find little enough out there to portray scale with..as the season fades so too will the ego )..it is farthest along...has the largest "bloom"...

it also has the most advanced ears...we discussed "catastrophic sexual mutation" yesterday...the maize will proceed to demonstrate...( or, you could speed things up and have a shufti at the sweetcorn at the supermarket )

those are not the only emergent ears out there..just the most advanced...

pollinators are hard at work in the zucchini blooms...squash impends...

presumably they have been at the cucumber blooms as well since there are a number of finished cukes hanging about...

and, finally, a close up of the resilient, invasive, drought resistant, horse resistant, probably herbicide resistant carolina horse nettle as a reminder that we really are not in control and a hint that we just might be doing things here and there without any sort of full knowledge of possible consequences.

seeds

the plants in my back yard are a small microcosm of plants everywhere...there certainly is not a representative of every species of plant back there...however the ones that are there have an agenda that is almost universal in plants ( beyond the fungi and the ferns...and there are ferns and fungi out there ) and that is producing seeds...even the plants that clones of tubers ( spuds, jerusalem artichokes ) produce seed...the plants don't care about how many acres of soybeans we grow or who grew the prize winning pumpkin ...they are dead serious about reproducing and, one suspects, are fully aware that the fruits and vegetables will be eaten...it is a major seed dispersal system...the ramps are going to seed..i will collect as many as i can however i am aware that they can disappear overnight...they have before...

the teosinte plant in this photo may be difficult to see in that clump of grasses...it is the one between the upright bamboos...

it has four branches and is producing ears along the length of each...

some of them have opened to expose seeds in the making...

and the presence of many silks tells me more are in the way...in its native habitat there must be something that consumes the green seeds ( the mature ones are hard as rock )...but i haven't seen anything tough them here...if it were not for the bamboo and twine, eventually this plant would try to lay down to disperse seed as far from the parent plant as possible..one reason they grow so unmanagably tall...

the maize that's back there will be working on seed soon enough as well...its problem is it has no real dispersal mechanism beyond the humans that grow it...a truly domesticated plant, it has undergone what hugh iltus calls "catastrophic sexual mutation"...it cannot reproduce by itself...it was not the plant's idea...humans interfered and selected for tough husks and kernels strongly attached to cobs that would keep the seed from shattering on its own...symbiotic...co-evolved...whatever you call it, maize is dependent on humans to survive...and iof you have read any labels in the supermarket lately you know the inverse may be proportional...

the tomatoes...

the mature hot banana peppers and those on the way...

the grapes in the catalpa tree...

and the drupes of seeds in the mulberry tree all want to be eaten...they don't much care by what...to disperse seed and carry on the replication of their dna...relentless stuff.