My favorite crop, but many people don't seem to care for it these days.
I read an interesting question on the still growing thread on the problems with CSI: Miami’s “Bad Seed” episode.
Between this episode and some other stuff I’ve heard about corn, I started wondering what all the concern is about corn lately. … Can you now help shine some light on why the corn industry has been getting such a bad reputation lately? (more…)
Speaking of strange weather: Check out the first photo of the latest post on Plants are the Strangest People. I’m not used to seeing corn getting snowed on until the plants have already turned brown. But that’s exactly what happened in Iowa.
This will be my second winter without snow (except visits to see family in the rest of the country). It feels very unnatural. Hope I still remember how to drive in it (and shovel it) once I leave Berkeley.
Note that it’s 3:40 AM in the west coast. My weekend of decompression and vegetation is going well.
Thinning out my corn seedlings today I was struck by the fact that is:
Is made of the exact same stuff as this:
Plants may grow out of the soil, but when you’re holding a whole big mass of them, the weight in your hand came from nothing more than water, air, and light. The same stuff as rainbows.
I remember the first time I learned about that in high school biology. A guy in Europe weighted a pot full of dry soil, then planted a seed in it, watering only with distilled water. Over several years the seed grew into a large tree, which he finally uprooted, carefully rinsing off all the soil from the roots. After it had dried, he reweighed the soil, and found its mass almost identical to what it had been before he planted the tree. That very real, very solid, tree, made of nothing but water, air and sunlight.
I forgot to mention, at breakfast yesterday they gave us a little set of gifts all inside a PMB mug… made out of corn plastic! Also, there’s a key chain that’s a cube of clear plastic lights up and there’s a three-D model of DNA inside. So those were both cool.
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