Odd thing happening to my SE corn er, maize

[kl...@cobra.uni.edu]

In article <Pine.OSF.3.91j.95081...@saul2.u.washington.edu>, Travis Saling <tr...@u.washington.edu> writes:
>
> A couple of early SEs I'm trying for the first time (one is D'Artagnan;
> the other is Seneca Starshine, I think) are doing something I've never
> seen before.
>
> The main stalk is normal. Some of the tillers, however, are terminating
> not in a tassel head, but in some sort of bastardized ear or corn, but
> with no (or very little) husk.

Sounds like something got screwed up in a homeobox that controls
ear and tassel differentiation. This isn't well understood yet, but
it's known. This is the sort of observation that led Hugh Iltis
to the "Theory of Catastropic Sexual Transmutation" to explain the
morphology of corn ears. There's a pretty well-written
article about this in (I think) Bioscience, about 10-15 yrs ago.
>
> Should I have said Zea Mays?

Well.. in an international group, it would have been less ambiguous, as
"corn" can be the major grain crop of the area, regardless of species...

This can lead to the same sort of misunderstandings that happened years
ago, when someone came into the kitchen of a retreat house I was cooking
for, asking for "soda". I, thinking he was having problems with my
cooking, handed him a box of sodium bicarbonate. He wanted what I
grew up calling "pop". ;-)

Kay Klier kl...@cobra.uni.edu

[Travis Saling]

A couple of early SEs I'm trying for the first time (one is D'Artagnan;
the other is Seneca Starshine, I think) are doing something I've never
seen before.

The main stalk is normal. Some of the tillers, however, are terminating
not in a tassel head, but in some sort of bastardized ear or corn, but
with no (or very little) husk.

Any guidance? Has anyone seen this before?

Travis S.