What is corn silk? Why is it there?

Factual Questions
1

What is corn silk? What pupose does it serve and why does it form? Is there some characteristic about it that is necessary to the growth of corn? Could corn be genetically altered to eliminate it while maintaining the essence of corn? I think there are some cosmetic products that use it but does it have any unique properties that make it desirable?

Now I will cook the ears, butter and salt them, enjoy, and await the insight of someone who knows a whole lot more about this stuff than I do.

2

It is essential. When corn pollen lands on the unfertilized ear, the silk grows from it until it reaches a kernel, which fertilizes it. Without the silk, the kernels don’t don’t develop and you have nothing to eat.

3

That’s close, but not quite right. Corn silk is the stigma and style of a female corn flower. Pollen from the male flowers lands on and sticks to the style at the end of the silk. The pollen then grows a pollen tube down the length of of the stigma, to reach the ovary.
This wiki article on Flower anatomy gives some detail, but would really benefit from better illustrations.

4

Here…

SEX in the Corn Field:
How’s It Done?
Dr. R.L. (Bob) Nielsen
Agronomy Department, Purdue University
more (so much more) than you ever wanted to know about hot corn sex - with illustrations and photos!

5

Pssh, stop showing us corn smut.

Hah! I crack myself up.

6

The first time I saw corn smut in my garden I got chills down my spine. I peeled back the shuck, and there was this huge black alien growth where I expected tender kernels. I thought, “a lot of cheap horror films started just like this.” :eek:

I’m told that corn smut is used as an edible fungus in Mexico and Japan.

7

Eh, in terms of the horrors nature can come up with it’s pretty soft-corn. :wink:

8

Indeed it is in Mexican food where it is called huitalacoche or cuitalacoche

9

So the silk is penii?

10

I you really want to think about it, every flower is a sex organ.

11

  1. The silk is more akin to a vagina. The pollen grain is the plant equivalent to a spermatozoan. The silk is there to hold the pollen grains and allow them time to fertilise the ovaries. So in that sense the silk strands are most akin to vaginas

  2. The plural of penis is penises. If you really feel you must show off then penes is acceptable. Penii is never correct.