IMAGE: Glass gem corn, via the Seeds Trust Facebook page.
This photograph of an ear of glass gem corn has been making the rounds on the internet over the past week (often accompanied with a note declaring it is NOT PHOTOSHOPPED!).
What happened is that, last year, seedsman Greg Schoen was moving and left some of his corn varieties, most of which originally came from part-Cherokee “corn-teacher” Carl Barnes, with his fellow seed-saving enthusiast and Seeds Trust founder Bill McDorman. Bill grew some, and “got so excited, [he] posted a picture on Facebook.”
IMAGE: Glass gem corn, via the Seeds Trust Facebook page.
The result, writes Bill, is that “GLASS GEM corn has gone viral!” There is no more seed for sale this season, and the Seeds Trust website keeps going down under the pressure of the world’s newfound interest in this corn varietal.
As it happens, before human selection interfered, corn ears were all multi-coloured.* Kernels are siblings housed on the same ear, meaning that each kernel has its own set of genes, including those that control colour. According to the Toronto Globe and Mail columnist April Holladay:
Livestock feeders prefer vitamin-rich yellow kernels, Southerners like white kernels, and Native Americans favor blue. Years of deliberate selection, careful pollination, and storing of seeds produced these single-color corn ears. […] Some studies suggest corn pigments promote resistance to insects or fungi that invade an ear of corn.
IMAGE: Glass gem corn, via the Seeds Trust Facebook page.
Before you rush to add your name to the waiting list for glass gem seeds, I should just add that this kind of flint corn is usually nixtamalised and ground into flour for tortillas, hominy, polenta, and tamales, which (as Rachel Laudan convincingly demonstrated at Postopolis DF!) is a rather exhausting and time-consuming process.
Still, it is the most beautiful corn in the world.
[NOTE: I came across glass gem corn via that long-time Edible Geography standby, the Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog.]
[UPDATE: *In response to a charming comment via Twitter, I should add that the evolution of corn from teosinte is actually a long and rather complicated story, but that selective breeding certainly encouraged the development of single-colour ears.]
