Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Corn freaks?

I'm seeing something strange on my corn plants:

Underdeveloped tassels and silks on the same node.

It's occurring not just on one plant, but several.


This tends to occur on the upper nodes - above 2 regular ears.

Is this common or freaky?

5 comments:

Daphne Gould said...

How about common and freaky? I've read about it on a lot of blogs over the years. I so rarely grow corn that I've never seen it. It is called tassel ear. It is most commonly seen on suckers, but can form on the main stalk too. I read a lot of debate about what causes it but I think people don't really know what causes the hormone imbalance. They surmise it can be caused by damage to the growing tip caused by a host of things from herbicides to hail.

Autumn Belle said...

tassel ear? What an appropriate name. This picture is interesting.

red studio said...

I think they are funny and odd. I like how they look, wouldn't want to eat them. Thank you for the fun post on corn gone wrong....very wrong.

Tatyana@MySecretGarden said...

Jackie, Halloween is coming....

Jackie said...

Thanks, Daphne for enlightening us. And thanks to everyone else for enjoying the "freak show"!