AMERICA'S CHIEF CROP 315 



other cultivated plants tends to vary. Like 

 many of the half-wild plants, teosinte has an 

 inveterate tendency to sucker from the root. 



Anyone who has suckered a field of corn on a 

 hot June day will appreciate the importance of 

 eliminating this wild habit of the teosinte, espe- 

 cially when grown for grain rather than for food. 

 It must have taken centuries to eradicate this 

 defect, as it is even yet more or less persistent in 

 nearly all varieties of corn. 



In kernel the teosinte most resembles, though 

 not by any means very closely, our common 

 varieties of pop corn ; but with this great differ- 

 ence ; only a pellicle protects the kernel in all our 

 cultivated corn, while the tough, chitinous cover- 

 ing envelops the kernels of teosinte. But the 

 resemblance of the plant itself to the corn plant 

 leaves no question of their affinity, and the head 

 of grain, notwithstanding its insignificant size, 

 has individual kernels that are suggestive of 

 diminutive kernels of corn. 



If any doubt were entertained as to the re- 

 lationship of this wild plant to the cultivated 

 corn, this would be dispelled by hybridizing ex- 

 periments, for the two cross as readily as two 

 kinds of corn. 



In Mexico it is quite common for the teosinte 

 to hybridize with the Mexican corn, through the 



