CHERAN: a sierra TARASCAN village — BEALS 



221 



color was frequent, and many of the lighter 

 cobs were flushed with purple or red. Many 

 of the specimens belong to the color type called 

 "cherry" by geneticists. In the field the purple 

 plant color of a good many of the plants was 

 conspicuous as well as the almost complete 

 absence of tillers, which were frequent enough 

 in the Tulukenio collections to produce a mass 

 effect and make the field look thicker below 

 row No. 30 than it was above that number. 

 A summary of the records shows that on the 

 average the plants of Black maize were taller, 

 that their leaves were a little less pubescent, 

 and that they averaged 5 instead of 7 tassel 

 branches. The differences between Black maize 

 from Cheran and from Nahuatzen were minor, 

 the chief one being more color in the seed coat it- 

 self in addition to the prevailingly dark aleurone 

 color. On the whole, the plants from Cheran 

 were a little more variable and were about what 

 might have been expected if varieties from 

 Nahuatzen were grown in close proximity to 

 other varieties from Cheran. 



While the Black maize of Cheriin and 

 Nahuatzen is in general very similar to Mexican 

 Pyramidal corn from around Mexico City, its 

 broadish, rounded grains, its less condensed 

 tassels, and its tendency to purple plant color 

 are atypical for that region. 



Much of the Tulukenio maize is quite like the 

 corn from Mexico City. Nearly all the ears 

 had more or less pointed kernels (character- 

 istically with a dent behind the point) and those 

 which did not have them produced plants with 

 pointed kernels. While there was great varia- 

 tion, most of the varieties were small-grained 

 (7 mm. wide or less) . Unlike the Black varie- 

 ties (whose endosperm was invariably white) 

 about half had yellow endosperm. While the 

 Tulukenio maize varied greatly in the color of 

 the grains, it was prevailingly light and much 

 of it had a rather streaky, irregularly devel- 

 oped pinkish purple in the seed coat. The 

 colored portions were not sharply defined as in 

 variegated maize, but gave rather the effect of a 

 colorless ear which had been lightly brushed 

 with some such dye as eosin. It is apparently 

 due to allelomorphs of the 'P' series. While 

 a few of the ears were straight-rowed, on the 

 whole they were very irregular, at least on a 

 portion of the cob. 



Three of the Tulukenio collections (Nos. 1, 

 9, and 12, table 18) were of particular interest 

 since they are unlike any corn from Mexico 

 City which we have so far examined and since 

 resemblances to them were apparent in several 

 other collections (e. g. Nos. 16 and 17). They 

 are small-cobbed, very flinty, with no trace of 

 denting, and the cobs are cylindrical rather 

 than tapering. That they are not merely 

 poorly developed ears is proved by the fact that 

 the plants grown from them were somewhat 

 distinctive. They were short, one of them had 

 more tillers than any other plant in the field, 

 and their internode patterns revealed a strong 

 tendency toward the Pima-Papago pattern 

 rather than the Mexican Pyramidal pattern. 



We do not yet have enough data about the 

 kinds of maize to appraise the significance of 

 these extreme variants of Tulukenio maize. 

 It may be they are inferior types which have, 

 through inbreeding, segregated out of better 

 varieties. Since these mountain varieties are 

 grown in isolated plots and since each family 

 carefully preserves its own strain, this is quite 

 likely. Even so, their morphology may be a 

 significant throw-back to a type of corn once 

 grown in this region, or in some region from 

 which the Tarascan maize was derived. Since 

 in most of their peculiarities they suggest Pima- 

 Papago maize, which is known to be similar to 

 the prehistoric Basket Maker maize (Anderson 

 and Blanchard, 1942), it is possible that they 

 are evidence of a primitive small-ccbbed maize. 



A cytological study was made of five differ- 

 ent plants, by means of pachytene smears. 



Table 19. — Summary showing knob of each chromosome 

 for 5 collections of maize from Cheran 



S = Small knob. 

 T = Terminal knob. 



