HERITABLE CHARACTERS OF MAIZE 
I.—PISTILLATE FLOWERED MAIZE PLANTS: 
R. A. EMERSON 
Professor of Plant Breeding, New York State College of Agriculture. 
Corn Show held at Lincoln, Ne- 
braska, in the winter of 1913-14, 
there was exhibited a corn tassel 
with a heavy setting of seeds, A few 
seeds are not infrequently found in the 
staminate inflorescence of maize, partic- 
ularly in pod corn, and tillers of various 
corn varieties often end in ears instead 
of in tassels or have tassels, the central 
spikes of which are ear like. The freak 
exhibited at the corn show, however, 
was a large, much branched affair, 
wholly tassel-like in form except for the 
fact that it bore a heavy crop of seed 
like a well-filled head of broom corn 
or sorghum. It retained no indication 
of having had any staminate flowers. It 
was apparently a wholly pistillate in- 
florescence, though tassel-like in form. 
This freak specimen came into pos- 
session of the writer, and seeds were 
planted at the Nebraska Experiment 
Station in the spring of 1914. All the 
resulting plants had normal tassels with 
no pistillate flowers and normal ears 
wholly pistillate, and were typical rep- 
resentatives of a large, rather late white 
dent variety commonly seen in the Mid- 
dle West. The fact that no abnormal 
plants appeared was not unexpected, 
for the parent plant, being pistillate 
flowered, must have been pollinated 
throughout by other plants, presumably 
normal ones, If the abnormality in 
question were recessive, it would not 
appear in the first generation from 
crosses with normal plants. 
One of the normal plants was self- 
pollinated. The progeny of this plant, 
|: THE “freak” class at the Annuai 
grown at Ithaca, N. Y., in 1915 and 
later seasons, consisted of both normal 
plants and plants with  pistillate 
flowered tassels like the original tassel 
found at the corn show. Evidently the 
abnormal tassel is inherited as a reces- 
sive to normal. On account of the tassel- 
like form of this pistillate inflorescence 
and of its position at the top of the 
stalk, the abnormality is known as 
“tassel seed” and is designated by the 
genetic symbol ts, its dominant normal 
allelomorph being Ts, 
Wholly pistillate flowered plants ap- 
peared also in an unrelated lot of maize 
grown in 1915. The parent plant was 
grown in 1914 along with others of the 
variety known as Pride of the North. 
All these plants were normal, were 
rather small and very early, and had 
red-cobbed yellow dent ears typical of 
the variety. The seed was from a 
bulk sample obtained from the Agron- 
omy Department of the Nebraska Ex- 
periment Station, the original stock 
having come from Mitchell, S, D. Sev- 
eral of the 1914 plants were self-polli- 
nated, but only one showed abnormal- 
ities in the 1915 progenies. The pro- 
geny of this one plant consisted of 
normal plants and plants that had wholly 
pistillate flowered tassels. Evidently this 
abnormality also is inherited as a reces- 
sive. At first it was assumed to be 
identical with the one first described, 
but this is now known not to be the 
case. To distinguish it from the tassel- 
seed type, and because of the more 
nearly ear-like form of the tassel, it is 
called “tassel ear’? and designated by 
1This is the second in a series of papers on the heritable characters of maize, the first 
by G. N. Collins and J. H. Kempton, on “Lineate Leaves,” having appeared in the January 
number of the JouRNAL. 
The next will be a brief discussion of “Brachytic Culms.”—Eprror. 
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