All I really remember about it is standing on my porch and grinding dry corn kernels off of a cob. It was kind of a pleasant feeling. I did make some reasonable assumptions about the source of the corn because it was in a spot where we cooked.
And then you planted them? I’m confused.
Which you don’t do with the kind of corn you boil - sweet corn.
But you ignored the reasonable assumption about the source of the corn being the kernels that escaped while you were shelling the kind of corn you strip from the cob after it has dried - field corn.
But, when a tardigrade is frozen - or dehydrated - is it alive? Dead?
My understanding is that tardigrades survive certain extreme conditions by going into a state that is a kind of deep hibernation in which they can survive for long periods of time, in addition to their tremendous resistance to other adverse conditions like ionizing radiation.
‘Leave me out of this please, I got enough shit over the non-existent cat!’
~ Erwin Schrödinger
A simple but interesting test might be to drop a known to be ready variety of corn into the boiling water and pull out pieces of it about 2 min apart. Then let it sit out and dry, and see if the is a difference in the germination
It might. (For one thing, if you do that experiment, it might actually convince you that boiled corn won’t sprout.) But it wouldn’t tell you anything about sweet corn that’s boiled briefly and eaten fresh; because that corn isn’t ripe. It’s got nothing to do with variety (though other characteristics of “sweet corn” do); it’s got to do with maturity. Even varieties suitable for eating as “sweet corn” will be too tough to eat if allowed to mature enough to germinate.
And I’m still waiting for an answer to what you did with that corn you pulled off the cob.
Some living things that can survive extreme conditions do so by forming a protective spore around the cell: While in spore form, the cell is much tougher, but almost completely inactive. But there are still life processes going on inside, just very slowly.
And corn can be eaten (by humans) even completely raw. At least, if it’s the kind of corn you’d normally eat cooked.
You can eat field corn raw . . . once.
I stood on the edge of the porch and ground it off into a planter right next to a leaky faucet. I just happened to notice it was sprouting and I was surprised by that and that is the only reason I remember it.
You can eat field corn raw if it’s young enough.
I suppose you can eat older field corn raw if you’re determined enough – the kernels, after all, are small enough to swallow whole – but I don’t think you’ll digest it, I think it’ll pass through. Or swell up inside you and make you wish you hadn’t.
It’s unclear to me whether you are talking about fresh kernels of sweetcorn that you removed from a cob of sweetcorn after cooking and eating some of it (this is what I assumed), or if you’re talking about corn that was dried that you removed from the cob and boiled to cook and rehydrate it.
That’s right - the factual question we seem to have sort of veered away from is the matter of diapause (dormancy) and in the specific case of seeds, anhydrobiosis (staying viable when dried out). As far as I know, it is generally held that in this state, metabolic processes are very significantly scaled down and slowed down, however, there appears to be some research and evidence to suggest that for some organisms, desiccation causes all metabolic activity to cease in a way that is ‘poised’ to resume on rehydration - like stopping a clock, but leaving the spring wound up.
My question was prompted by a book I read once that contended defining death - and life - is not necessarily a simple task. But I ought not extend this hijack.
I don’t know what’s reasonable about assuming that the source of a cob of fully mature, dried down corn kernels that were starting to sprout would have been an ear of immature, boiled sweet corn that you somehow hadn’t noticed had been left intact after the party. That makes three strong indications that that wasn’t the source – one, that it was mature corn, not the immature corn you would have been cooking; two, that although it was somewhere obvious enough that you picked it up to shell it you’d somehow missed it long enough for it to dry entirely in conditions otherwise moist enough for it to sprout; and three, the utterly obvious one that cooked corn kernels won’t sprout.
For at least the third time – all sorts of critters move corn around. Not all of them can move whole ears; but quite a few can.
Adaptation to dehydration followed by rehydration at a significantly later time certainly is present in corn seed. But adaptation to surviving high temperatures is a different adaptation entirely, and while some species might have both adaptations (I think tardigrades do, and to a much lesser extent the seeds of some species that need to survive forest fires), corn does not have both adaptations.
I think it would not be unreasonable to characterise some of the features of corn as being heat-resistant; the germ end of the seed is buried inside a corky cob, covered with a thick layer of endosperm, encased in a tough pericarp, blanketed by an insulating layer of silks, wrapped tightly in multiple layers of husks.
The only problem with that is: modern corn is probably very different to its wild ancestors.
Just a little,
Indeed (as @crowmanyclouds just illustrated.)
Those differences weren’t bred into the corn to make it heat resistant; they’re to increase the yield, increase the size of individual kernels, make it easier to separate the edible portion (teosinte’s kernels are each in individual husks), and make it easier to harvest (by keeping the kernels together on the cob after ripening, instead of allowing them to shatter and spread their own seed as wild crops do.) – plus, in the case of sweet corn, to make it sweeter, make it more tender, and make it hold longer both before and after harvest at its most sweet and tender stage.
Modern crops in general, corn included, are also bred to sprout readily under the expected field conditions at time of planting. Which is, not surprisingly, not in the middle of a fire, or of boiling water. Some crop seed is treated briefly with heat, including sometimes hot water, to kill disease organisms that may be on the surface of the seed – but such heating times and temperatures need to be carefully controlled, because even slightly more heat than will kill the disease organisms will also kill the seed. Those temperatures are generally much cooler than boiling (note temps in the chart cited below are Fahrenheit, boiling water is 212ºF):
And note that corn isn’t even on that list. Corn seed isn’t generally heat treated, though it’s often treated with fungicides. I did come up with one cite about experimentally heat treating corn, though I’ve only got access to the abstract:
and they’re talking about temperatures in the 120’s F; nowhere near 212.
(Corn in any condition in which anybody’s going to eat it without grinding is going to be much higher moisture than any seed corn in storage.)
So, it seems as though the consensus is that a dormant seed is “alive.” But I’m not sure I’ve len a definition of “alive” or “life” that would explain that position. Not saying I disagree. Just asking for some citations or explanations as to how a dormant seed, which will not change in any way unless subjected to water/heat/scarification/etc. qualifies as “alive.” Or how the term “alive” applies equally to that seed as to one of us.