Corn

Zea mays

Poaceae

Maize — the American grass that became a continent’s grain, and a sweet summer cob if you pick it the day the silk browns.

Sweet corn as food. Field corn is nixtamalized or cooked as a grain — raw field corn is not a cob.

Parts used: Fresh kernels · Dried grain (nixtamalized or cooked as food)
Traditional notes: Kitchen cob · Traditional grain staple · Nixtamal and hominy
Grow · USDA 6b: Tender annual. Heat and a block, not a single row (it is wind-pollinated). In a block after frost. Isolation if you also grow popcorn. In work: May · Jun · Jul · Aug · Sep
Harvest: Silk brown, juice milky when you puncture a kernel.

Plant a block, not a line.
Eat the same day. The fridge only slows the clock.

Safety

Untreated maize as the only staple Known corn allergy

Companions

Plant with Cucumber, Green bean, Nasturtium, Pea, Pumpkin, Rosemary.

Lore

Teosinte does not look like an ear of corn. That is how long people walked with it. Nixtamal — grain cooked with lime — is why Mesoamerican diets did not invent pellagra; later poverty diets of untreated meal did. The word corn in British English used to mean any grain. In America it means this one.

The Herbarium — a teaching catalog, not a clinic. Traditional use is history, not a prescription. USDA 6b dates are a week either way, not a promise. Do not eat, drink, or harvest a plant you cannot name.