Clearly, if I had spent any time on a farm, I’d have this understanding in my bones, but I don’t. (On the other hand, I imagine I can navigate downtown better than some of my rural brothers and sisters). I haven’t found anything clearly definitive online, so I ask the farmer/ag dopers for some clarification. To wit - I understand that the silks of the ear of corn, being the female part of the plant, receive the pollen from the tassels. In several sources, I see that the pollen grows down the silks to “the ovules (potential kernels)…” (Italics mine). This leads me to believe that until the ovules are fertilized, they don’t develop into kernels. But other sources seem to suggest that the kernels are there already during pollination - that they’re not *potential * kernels, they’re kernels. For example, many articles about harvesting refer to doing it a few days after pollination. That would seem to mean that the kernels are pretty well developed at that time. This is confusing me, and I don’t have a clear understanding of this timing aspect of the botany of corn, despite spending some time trying to find out. Can anyone clear this up? Thanks. xo, C.
You know baby corn? That’s what unfertilized corn ears look like. The kernels start out as these little blips of fuzzy nubs (highly technical terms ;)) before they’re fertilized, and they fill out gradually. There’s a silk going to each kernel, and that’s how the pollen is delivered. The soft, bendy tips on sweet corn are kernels that didn’t get fertilized.
I’m not sure on the actual timeframe of maturation, since you don’t have much interaction with a field of corn after it gets to be about three inches tall. But here’s what I remember: Corn gets pollinated while the silks are still soft, so that would be about 6-8 weeks after planting (planting in May, pollinization in July), and it’s done being pollinated by the time the silks dry up (late July/early August). That’s usually 2-3 weeks after the silks come out (late July/early August). Sweet corn is ready by the second or third week in August for us, when the kernels are still milky. If you eat it before that, it doesn’t really taste like anything. Field corn is harvested when it dries out, right around now.
I don’t know anyone that harvests corn just days after fertilization – both field and sweet corn would be pretty worthless, since the ears wouldn’t be filled out. Maybe it was in the name of science?
Baby corn is fertilized – it’s harvested a week or so after fertilization occurs, rather than being allowed to fully mature.
I did not know that. Thank you.
Unfertilized corn does look a lot like it, though.
http://www.agry.purdue.edu/ext/corn/pubs/corn-03.htm
http://www.agry.purdue.edu/ext/corn/pubs/corn-02.htm
I spent time looking for pictures of ears at the time before pollination and failed. Some small pointed bumps with a silk attached to each is what you would find.