flower to root with a dash of autumn

the corn in a bucket ( first photo ) is working on further flower ( tassel ) development ( second )... and i found the first silks this morning ( third )...a few of the plants have developed support roots ( fourth )...a sign of maturing growth...the mantis is still dwelling among the stalks ( fifth ) so there must ample prey about...meanwhile the northern tepehuan teosinte is in full flower ( sixth )...no silks to report just yet...they do have impressive, tiered support roots though ( seventh )...support roots are not confined to zea family members...i was claring out some fox tail ( japanese bottle ) grass ( eighth ) and it has some much smaller support roots ( ninth )...while we are in the oriental ( and invasive ) area of the plant world, the chinese yams are happily producing aerial bulbs ( tenth ) to spread their tribe...finally the cucumber plants are still blooming and very green at the tops ( eleventh )...and still producing ( twelfth )...however, as is their wont, they are seriously dying back at the base ( thirteenth ) always an harbinger of autumn ( thirty days..just saying )

almost ripe

the cornfield behind the big box stores with spiffy curbs and street lights ( top two photos ) is still "available" ( third photo ) for whatever commercial prospects you might have in store for it...a dearth of takers this year resulted in a crop of dense yellow #2 that has just about come to fruition...not quite yet though...there's till some green in the leaves even though the husks are dried and in some cases splitting open like the ones in the fourth photo ( and what's up with that secondary ear? are those kernels in there? looks odd...if i can find it again this weekend i will take another look...would they really extrude a mutant into hot pockets? )...so harvest is a bit of a ways off...next month perhaps...certainly before thanksgiving...there are some impressive support roots out there ( fifth photo )...i am interested in all sorts of zea morphology and support roots strike me as an excellent adaptation...but that's just me...there are some wild flowers blooming out there at the tail end of october...the season hangs on..but they're talking about a possibility of snow tomorrow and that could be that...even if it doesn't stick.

industrial autumn

it is a blustery and coolish october day in the nexus and the corn still looks like a john steuart curry painting...irregardless, production has pretty much ended and the wait is for the corn to dry enough to harvest...those secondary ears ( third and fourth photos ) haven't gotten any bigger since my last visit...their size would seem to indicate that they aren't going to add much to the harvest..however, the way industrial agriculture is structured every little bit helps...even if farmers sell to elevators at prices below cost the subsidies those few extra kernels help add to probably don't hurt...the last photo is of an impressive array of zea support roots...different in size than teosinte's, they still mark them out as relatives.

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.

9-3-2012 photo appendix

zea diploperennis support roots ( top photo )... hopi blue maize support roots ( second and third photo )...northern tepehuan teosinte support roots ( fourth photo ) and the pgp about eight 'o clock this morning

8-26-2012 photo appendix

a chinese yam plant...some of the multitude of aerial bulbs it produced...and zea support roots on northern tepehuan teosinte ( the one with the multiple tiers of roots ) and on hopi blue maize.

again !?!

i really was going to leave the whole zea business be for a bit...give it a rest...there are a few people out there who are as geeked about it as i am...but we surely must be a minority of the species...however, when i got to campus this morning the hopi blue maize support roots were out in full force ( second photo ) and they are impressive...as a corollary to this the northern tepehuan teosinte is producing a second set of them ( and will continue to produce them until autumn ) the zea diploperennis will be sprouting them soon as well...forewarned is forearmed...there will be more photos.