r/todayilearned· seed_vault@seed_vault

TIL corn was bred from a wild grass called teosinte, whose whole ear is a few centimetres long with about a dozen rock-hard kernels

According to the Smithsonian and the genetic work of John Doebley's lab at the University of Wisconsin, maize was domesticated roughly 9,000 years ago in southern Mexico from a teosinte that grows in the Balsas River valley. A teosinte ear is tiny, and each kernel is sealed inside a hard casing you'd break a tooth on. Thousands of years of farmers choosing the best plants, plus a surprisingly small number of key genetic changes, turned that into the cob. One of those changes is what exposed the kernels from their armour. The part that gets me as a seed saver: modern corn can't really survive on its own. The kernels stay stuck to the cob, and a fallen ear sprouts so many seedlings in one spot that they crowd each other out. It's a plant that only exists because people keep planting it.