MAIZE, OR INDIAN CORN. Zea Mays, Linn. Graminece. Figs. 596-648.
Maize or Indian corn is a grass that is grown both for its grain and its herbage, which are used for food. The grain is used whole or ground, and in various preparations for both human and stock-food. The herbage is a forage used for soil ing, silage or as dried and cured fodder. Various manufac tured products are made from maize. The plant is annual, dying each year, even in its original semi tropical home in Mexico. It is the most important and most distinctive American crop. The word "maize" is de rived from the Hay tian word "mahiz," the name by which Indian corn or maize was called when Co lumbus found it growing on the island of Hayti. Mahiz, or marisi, is said to be an Arawak Indian word of South American origin. In North America the word " corn," used generically in England for bread grains, more particularly for wheat, is em ployed specifically for maize. The word has no other application than to maize in this country. It is common, however, to speak of the plant as Indian corn.
Origin of maize.
The writer has presented elsewhere the proofs of the Mexican origin of maize [see Literature, page 427]. Maize relates itself botanically to a na tive Mexican grass, teosinte (Euchleena Mexicans, which see), and fertile hybrids of this grass and maize are known, producing a plant described by Watson as Zea cantina. From the peculiar beha vior of these hybrids, the writer has suggested that our cultivated maize is of hybrid origin, prob ably starting as a sport of teosinte, which then crossed itself with the normal ancestor, producing our cultivated corn. This is speculative, but there cannot be any doubt that the close relationship of maize and teosinte points the way to the determi nation of the botanical characters of the original wild corn plant. Recently, Montgomery has sug gested a theory as to the nature of the maize ear, in which, in conclusion, he states "that corn and teosinte may have had a common origin, and that in the process of evolution the cluster of pistillate spikes in teosinte were developed from the lateral branches of a tassel-like structure, while the corn ear developed from the central spike. It is probable
that the progenitor of these plant s was a large, much-branched grass, each branch be ing terminated by a tassel -like structure, bearing hermaphro dite flowers." [See lit erature references at end of article.] The Zea canna of Mexico (first described in 1890, by Watson) is of great interest in studying the origin of corn. Bailey experi mented with this plant and made hybrids with forms of cultivated maize. Without com mitting himself as to the origin of L e a casino itself, he made the following observa tions (Cornell Bulletin No. 49, 1892) on its possible relations to Indian corn (subsequent experiments have not been published): "It may be worth while to inquire whether this Canina corn still retains a specific identity, whether it really is a distinct species from the common corn, Lea Mays. For myself, I am strongly of the opinion that it is not a distinct species. I am rather inclined to think, with the native Mexicans and Professor Duges, that it is the original form of Zoo Mugs, or at least very near it. It ex plains many points in the evo lution of Indian corn. Some varieties of sweet corn occa sionally produce rudimentary multiple ears, and this Canina seems to tend to lose them under cultivation. The ten dency of cultivation in all plants is to develop some fruits or some organs, rather than all fruits or all organs. The suckering habit has been discouraged in the selection of corns. The tendency to sucker, the tendency to produce tassels on the ends of ears, the profuse drooping tassels of many little-improved varieties, the predominance of flint corns northward and of dent or pointed corns southward, the occurrence of many curious and aboriginal corns in the Aztec region—all these become intelligible if Zca canna is the original of Indian corn." Botanical characters.