176 



PLANTS AND MAN 



when the grain is heated with the result that the steam formed 

 causes an explosion which turns the kernel inside out, producing 

 the familiar pop corn (fig. 107). 



Maize is of little importance as a human food; some is made 

 into corn meal, but being poor in gluten it does not make a 

 coherent and satisfactory flour. Mush, scrapple and hominy are 

 a few of the American foods which use corn meal as a basis. 

 Some maize finds its way into prepared breakfast cereals. But 



Fig. 107. — Distribution of acreage devoted to growing maize commercially 



(1930). 



far more goes into various industrial uses (see p. 396), in making 

 oils, starches, gums, alcohol, explosives, paper and charcoal. 



Rice 



Rice, the only cereal food available to tropical and Oriental 

 countries, is a swamp-dwelling grass originally native to south- 

 eastern Asia, cultivated in China and India for at least 4000 

 years. From there it spread to Syria and North Africa, reaching 

 Europe in the fifteenth century and America in the seventeenth 

 when it was brought to North Carolina. 



Rice is an annual which grows to a height of four feet, re- 

 producing by a branching inflorescence known as a panicle, each 

 branch terminating in a single grain with its husk (fig. 108). 

 Rice thrives in hot moist tropical regions and is usually cultivated 



