Corn Sex

I never imagined I’d be talking about sex on my blog, although when I entered that word in the Search box on the Homepage several posts appeared which included the word in their content. My mother is probably spinning in her grave… Sorry, Mom, but this is important stuff.

As I drove across several corn producing states on my way out west I noticed something I had never really paid attention to. In one specific field there were alternating, machine-wide rows (maybe 10 to 12 stalks wide), one group with tassels on the top and the next without. That got me thinking – male/female? Not so fast, Skippy. Upon doing a little research all corn stalks are monoecious, meaning they have both male and female “parts”. Yikes!!

(Photo credit: Nature Journals)

The tassel, a flower at the top of all corn stalks, is the male part and produces pollen. The sperm, if you will.

The ear, which grows before fertilization, has lots of silk strands which grow out of the end (and which you remove, along with the husk, when preparing the ear for consumption). Each strand of silk is attached to an individual kernel (the fruit) which will develop once the silk is pollinated. Let the wind do its matchmaking and voila!

So the farmer who planted the field I saw was trying to promote cross-pollination. The hope is that by removing the tassels at the top of one section of corn the silk on that stalk must get pollinated from a neighboring plant that still has a tassel atop it. They don’t want a stalk to “self-pollinate” (bad stalk…).

Who knew???

Only every farmer that grows corn.

Relax Mom, at least I didn’t name this post Corn Porn…

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And since we’re talking about corn and not porn, here is a fun fact:

The highest ranking corn producing states in the US in 2024 were:

1 – Iowa – 2,627 million bushels

2 – Illinois – 2,311

3 – Nebraska – 1,803 (take that, Cornhuskers…)

4 – Minnesota – 1,345

5 – Indiana – 1,000

Then South Dakota, Kansas, Missouri, Ohio and North Dakota rounding out the top ten.

(Source: CropProphet.com)