2022-12-06T08:00:00Z
I’ve planted 5 corn cultivars this season to start my landrace. My principal interest is polenta and one of the cultivars is Floriani Red, a polenta corn. The others are Red Hogan, Manning Pride (both are Australian cultivars), Giant Indian Flint and a feed corn. I don’t have to worry about GMO corn as it has never been approved for growing here in Australia.
I’ve also planted some teosinte at one end of the patch but I’m beginning to doubt the wisdom of this. If I allow the teosinte to cross into the corn how difficult will it be to reselect something worthwhile?
Ryder T
Great question. I’d like to put some teosinte out near the corn as well, as I understand is often done in Mexico. I’m willing to take some risks to rewild the corn to a certain degree but since I really don’t know what I’m doing, teosinte is so different, and I think the only teosinte traits interesting to me are nutrition and (moonshot) perenniality for the perennial teosinte, if I already had locally adapted seed I’d make sure I had enough seed saved from a previous year to reset and some seed this season I could be highly confident wasn’t going to be pollinated by it. Or - - less likely given the source - - an ability to just be OK with any result.
I hope somebody can give you a good answer, and/or that the indigenous farming course has something to say about corn and teosinte intercropping! Rewilding crops is a growing interest of mine.
Christopher W
IIRC, Joseph and Mark have worked with teosinte, so hopefully they’ll come along and answer. I’m interested in doing the same.
Mark R
I grew pure perennial teosinte one time, and it was great fun to see it. Only one of the few seeds I had sprouted and after an iffy start it ended up as a giant mass. Well over ten feet tall and spreading from tillers to easily three feet around. The outer stalks grew air roots as much as two or three feet above the ground and did their best to fall over and take root, I kept them tied up in a clump to prevent that. The plant did not flower at all. It did not survive the winter which might be for the best as it seemed determined to take over the world. They only grass I’ve ever seen more vigorous and robust than Johnson grass.
Joseph used to have something he called Neandercorn. It was, I think, a cross between annual teosinte and some other corn. It also grew very well for me and also made lots of tillers. The ears were not overly large but well-formed and filled out with good tip cover. Smaller but also well-formed ears matured on the tilers. I crossed it to a grex of sweet corn and was quite pleased with the result. Genetics from that cross is still in my flint corn project, I favor it by including a disproportionate amount of seed from any plant that makes productive tillers and abundant air rots.
Ray S
Whoa, big plant! Mine is an annual teosinte I think. I hope it doesn’t grow as big as yours. I have seven plants at one end of the corn patch. If it’s daylength sensitive it probably won’t flower here but I think I’ll leave it. Sounds like it might be interesting to have some teosinte genetics in the mix.
Joseph Lofthouse
I have grown [corn x teosinte] crosses. Everything from stable selections to F1 hybrids. The initial hybrids have plants, seeds, and cobs with features close to that of teosinte, so it takes a couple years to select for modern corn traits. What I love most about the cross is the tillering, and multiple cobs per plant.
Mark R
I can’t find my pictures of the monster perennial teosinte but here is one of a Neandercorn plant.
And of the ears that came from it that first year. This is all of them as the squirrels attacked and took the rest that year. I loved the little tassel hats but the went away in following generations.
Christopher W
I like the tassel-hats. When I first had tassel-ears form, I searched around to figure out what was going on and found this article: Tassel Ears in Corn (Purdue University) which talks about how the flowers of corn start out “perfect” and then change during their development to become male and female only. Except that doesn’t always work perfectly. I wonder if tassel-hats are the same phenomenon in reverse.
Mark R
I just figured the tassel-hats were something that happened in early generations of teosinte crossing with modern corn. I thought they were fun to see but doubted they are really a good thing and wondered how long it might take to select them out.
Turned out, not very long, they were mostly gone in just a couple of seasons. I’m glad that they could be separated from the productive tillers and increased prop roots which I consider good things.
The tillers and roots are about all I think that’s left of the teosinte in my corn now or at least all that I can see and that resembles the teosinte enough to make me think that’s where they came from.
Ryder T
These are gorgeous Mark!! How was the flavor?
Sarah McGee’s landrace had some corn that would have looked at home with these ears. One cob in particular stands out in my mind. It was deep red with large, round, mostly dented kernels and untidy rows. I found myself very strongly drawn to it. It was the only cob like it on the day I bought corn from her.
I tried not to give my preferences too much weight when putting together seeds from her landrace, but seeds from the pictured cob made it into the seeds Lowell used in starting the grain grexes. Very curious to know what next year will look like. And now I think I’m going to have to get some teosinte myself 
Lowell M
I had some tassel hats when I grew out Onaveno from the Native Seed Search. None of the plants tillered but quite a few had tassel hats. It’s interesting that that trait from teosinte remained in the mix but the tillering was selected against. I am planning on trying some crosses with annual teosinte next year. Thanks for the pictures
@Mark Reed
they’re inspiring me!
Ray S
Well, after reading all of the above I’m keen now that the teosinte should flower in time to contribute some pollen to my corn mix.
On a slightly more mundane note, I planted a row of various maxima squash seedlings among the corn and so of course we had a frost not two days later. Luckily the area was heavily mulched so only what was poking out above the hay got burnt!
Julia D
A while back I read Enduring Seeds by Gary Nabhan, and highlighted the passages about Teosinte, sharing here now. I have zero experience with this, so I’m curious what others think about the statement below ending in “They maintain themselves as separate entities .”
CHAPTER THREE: Fields Infused with Wildness > Location 769
Although they have been grown together for hundreds of years , Nabogame maize and the little teosinte do not completely integrate with one another ; there may be some gene flow between them , but one is not overwhelmed by the other . John Doebley underscored this point to me after he had analyzed the samples that Laura , Salvador , and I had sent to him : “ Despite the fact that the teosinte and maize are from the same field , they maintain themselves as separate entities . There is some leakage between them . . . a few alleles for which I could make a case for introgression . . . but most remain very different . ”
Location 788
Garrison Wilkes observed people harvesting hybrids between Indian corns and weedy teosinte . He was told that farmers from other areas would bring in their corn seed , so that it might be exposed to teosinte by being grown in fields where the latter was abundant. The resulting seed when planted was said to produce flintier kernels and greater yields .
Location 793
teosinte was tolerated and protected, for it invigorated their corn .
Ryder T
I think I agree with Mark’s assessment - - that was also my understanding, that teosinte was traditionally planted on the edges of cornfields rather than throughout to “make the corn stronger” . Presumably mixing it in evenly would lead to much teosintier corn that, based on Joseph’s testimonial, might have to be backcrossed for several seasons to regain its modern corniness.
I had not heard of farmers bringing their seed to be planted near teosinte and then returning for the resultant seed. That’s kind of amazing to me (and yet unsurprising given the amount of forgotten wisdom in indigenous methods). Sounds like a means of genetically reinvigorating an already locally adapted variety.
This notion of teosinte only contributing a small amount of genetic material seems worth examining critically given some testimonials in this thread, though I don’t have any experience either. Though different varieties could certainly behave differently and their might be a smaller genetic gulf if the domesticated crop was continually refreshed with wilder genes.
Mark R
Sounds like they might have just planted it close and let a little cross pollination take place rather than detasseling and hand pollination of an entire patch. That way the crossed seeds might be a relatively small percentage in the next generation but would further distribute teosinte genes but in a lower proportion, leaving the corn phenotypically, largely as it was. After a few years you might have to go back and pick up a fresh supply of the teosinte genes, interesting.
In a new corn project, I sometimes like to make the initial cross in both directions. Detassel A in this patch and B in that patch. Then when A/B and B/A are planted together the next year the marriage is pretty much cut in stone no matter how it eventually settles out. I do that because I never know what cytoplasmic traits might be involved and I want to preserve all of them. I did that with Joseph’s Neandercorn a couple of times.
That might work for any crop, but I do it mostly with corn because corn is so easy and fun to play with. It’s also the closest thing I know of to instant gratification in plant breeding.
Lowell M
This conversation might appreciate Oikos’ newsletter about his project with teosinte. Dude, what happened to your corn? – OIKOS Tree Crops
Mark R
I didn’t eat any of it that first year, saved it all for seed. I didn’t detassel it but grew it in close proximity to some sweet. Next couple of years I crossed the two back and forth and some of it was fine eating, but I soon grew disillusioned and tired of sweet corn.
I switched to flour corn and mixed a bunch of different kinds of it with the Neander/sweet and some still more “pure” Neander. Then I got tired of flour corn mostly because it is so prone to bugs and molds in my climate and switched to flint corn.
So I got a whole bunch of flint corns and mixed them up with the Neander/sweet, the sweet, the Neander/flour, the flour and the more “pure” neander. Then I found out about Zapalote Chico which is anything but flint but it has strong resistance to ear worms so I figured what the heck, and folded it in too.
In the distant ancestry of my corn are:
*Joseph’s Astronomy sweet corn
*A whole bunch of other sweet corns, including modern F1 hybrids. An Ohio Heirloom called Aunt Marys stood out among all for its vigor and productivity.
*Joseph’s Harmony Grain corn
*A whole bunch of Western four corns including Oaxacan green dent which I think is ugly but stood out for drought tolerance and stalk strength. Fortunately, it didn’t take too long to get rid of that green color
*A whole bunch of heirloom and newer breeds of flint corn including Carol’s Cascade corns and an absolutely outstanding (in my garden) northeastern heirloom called Bronze Beauty.
Those that stood out in their more pure states were reinforced in varying amounts more recently. They include, Aunt Mary’s sweet, Bronze Beauty flint, Oaxacan Green Dent, Zapalote Chico and the last of my Neander.
I’m done with tracking, hand pollinating and all that stuff. Now I just plant and select. When I find a good ear I just save its seeds in a pack by itself. I can tell extra good ears because their packs have more seeds.
I look for:
Disease and worm resistance
Drought tolerance
Fast maturity (two generations per season is possible, might be easy farther south)
Productive tillers and prop roots
Stalk strength
Good tip cover
Long slender ears with thin cobs and not more than 12 rows of big kernels, I prefer 8 rows.
Minimum two ears per stalk
Productivity in crowded conditions
Adaptation to shade or sun and competition with tree roots
Flinty kernels
Absence of color in the aleurone layer.
I still allow varied endosperm color but am favoring white
My primary interest in the teosinte is that if it is truly the ancient ancestor of all corn then it has the keys to absolutely everything.
I now have seed from maybe 25 ears that meet some of those criteria. About 15 that meet several, and two or three that meet most. I still looking for one that meets all. Progress is limited because I only have space for 500 plants at the most each year. Because of other projects next year, I may only have room for 100 plants.
The boy down the road tried growing corn to feed his turkeys but the deer ate it all, twice, so he gave up. He has plenty of space and a tractor. I have several rolls of old chain link fence and some t-posts. If he agrees that I can regularly inspect and select 50 -100 ears, I’ll give him most of my seed and the fence. But he has to come get the fence, I ain’t moving that crap again cause it’s heavy. And I want some turkeys.
Ryder T
That’s really interesting and a really helpful short writeup of the project history. It reminds me when I first started programming later in life. One of the most helpful things that helped me start to figure out building software was seeing how experienced programmers thought about problems. The same seems to be true now for experienced plant breeders.
Hope your neighbor is able to grow some of your corn this year! I think I would happily grow some as well if you wanted to give me any, though candidly I don’t have much experience. I grew a red popcorn (unknown decorative variety from Fowler’s pumpkin patch) for the first time this year and almost all of it got flattened in a storm. I ended up with probably less than fifty seeds from the tiny sad cobs of two or three plants. It had air roots too, though I thought they had emerged in response to the massive storm damage.
I saw Sarah at market today, bought some turnips and herbs. I asked her if she had crossed bloody butcher and teosinte and mentioned the unusual ears. I found I actually had bought another red ear with what I take to be another teosinte trait, the cob that narrows to a point. I’m not sure if this is the same as the tasselhat.
She smiled and said “I grow them all together, so anything’s possible”.
I’m new on your form 30 years ago I was crossing Teosinte and popcorn it took me 8 years to get the Teosinte to ripen in Baltimore Maryland I offered the seat on Seed Savers and at first there was people who wanted it but when I read their reports when they talked about it on seedsavers they said it was the earliest thing ever had it was too hard to harvest but I lost the scene because I didn’t plan it often enough but but to get it to bloom in Baltimore the Teosinte I had to treat it with 10 hour days and in 30 days it will usually silk I’m just telling us on this forum in the hope that it might help somebody be able to use Teosinte wherever they might live
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This year I grew some out and the biggest problem with this half teosinte popcorn stuff or my so-called wild corn I have to worry about the stuff self sewing in my garden but I grew it next to popcorn so it might be more like popcorn the seed I have to do some teosinte out this year but it’s annual teosinte it was only three plants in a 5 gallon bucket I let it grow about 2 ft and then I took it in and put it under the grow lights and it took 45 days for silk to show up but that was about the right time that corn dropping it’s pollen in my corn popcorn patch I noticed that it crosses quite rapidly with popcorn it don’t have the same resistance that regular corn does to it but popcorn is kind of resistant about crossing with other corn anyway so I have about maybe 2 dozen give most of those to somebody who could use them in the project my garden is way too small a 10 ft by 15 ft then leave me my space to work with many of these seeds thank you all
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