I have it in my head that the wheat most commonly grown in the US as a commercial crop is a mutant or dwarf variety. It only grows to about 3 feet tall as opposed to the non mutant or dwarf variety which grows as much as 6 feet tall.
Regardless of the correctness of that, it got me to wondering; is there is a variety of maize that doesn’t grow so tall thus being perhaps less resource intensive to grow?
Actually, the hybrid corns that farmers plant are already much shorter than can grow in the wild. Corn is a grass; like all grasses, it wants to grow tall for sunlight. Also, it grows in stages. The stem doesn’t begin to elongate until it reach the fifth stage, and then the same energy that sends the stalks up also powers the development of the ears.
Under some circumstances, like a cold snap at just the right state of development, the corn plant can be stunted, while the ears develop normally, but that’s an environmental accident, not a genetic thing that can be bred in. At least, not yet.
Corn grown for ear production commonly runs over 10 feet in height, similar to older types of maize, though primitive strains that put energy into vegetative growth can be much taller. Commercial varieties can get to 17 feet if plants are to be chopped up for livestock feed. Sweet corn plants are more like 5-7 feet. I have a tub of a blue corn variety that’s producing ears at 3 feet.
Sources: personal observation, iowacorn.org (which says Iowa corn gets 8 feet tall by midsummer), and Bing Crosby.
There are thousands of varieties of corn, including a number of dwarf corn varieties. Try searching on “dwarf corn” if you want to look at some.
Since the leaf surface is feeding the plant, my guess (though I don’t usually grow corn) is that there’s a tradeoff in which smaller plants tend to lead to smaller/fewer ears and therefore less production per acre; but that’s going to be only one of multiple factors affecting production, so it isn’t going to be as simple as ‘shorter plants mean less corn.’ You’re correct that some plants put more energy into vegetative growth and less into seed, and that facto (out of, again, lots of others) would work in the other direction, as lots of energy into vegetative growth would produce taller corn.
Shorter wheat plants are less liable to lodging (falling over), and if/where the straw isn’t considered valuable in itself may also be preferred for that reason.
thanks everyone. Obviously there’s a lot I don’t know about growing plants. 17 ft!?! Crickety, thats as tall(ish) as my house! I did not know that there is a variety of corn that grows that tall.
I hear it’s as high as an elephant’s eye.
…An’ it looks like its climbin’ clear up to the sky
I regularly drive by a field of corn being grown to be a corn maze in a few months. A few weeks ago I noted that the corn was about as tall as the rear bumper of an old pickup parked in the field. 2 days later the corn was as tall as the box on the truck. Yesterday the truck was totally hidden, the stalks are at least 8 feet tall. The stalks will be at least 12 feet tall by the time the maze opens.
Not limited to just the US, almost all the world commercial wheat crops.
I have doubts that “wild” wheats will grow to 6’.
Certainly modern commercial wheats have been bred to be shorter . It means the plant puts more of it energy into seeding and doesn’t fall over (lodge) after seed set and become problematic for harvesting especially with combine harvesters
I came here to say that this beautiful morn’ and got ninja’d.
My grandfather in front of his corn field sometime in the 1930s. He was fairly tall.
A sharp-dressed man.
Not your stereotypical image of a farmer.
I suspect that the impact of the horse on the Plains Indians wasn’t just transport: for the first time they could see where they were going and what was up ahead.
He was out standing in his field.
Dressed for church I believe.
As related in the well-known fable of Jack and the Cornstalk?
You could have made a Simpsons reference…