Hog-Wild Over Corn - facts about corn

Ranger Rick, Sept, 1999 by Janeen R. Adil

Feeling corn-fused? Here's an earful of cool corny facts!

It may not look like it, but corn really comes from a kind of grass! Scientists aren't sure what the first corn was like, but it may have been a tiny ear less than an inch (2.5 cm) long. Over many years, people learned to grow corn with bigger and bigger ears. Now, an ear of corn may be ten inches (25 cm) long.

FIRST CORN

No one is sure who first planted corn. But scientists have found 5000- year-old cobs and kernels. They were in a Mexican cave where people lived long ago. Guess what--those people were growing popcorn!

KINDS OF CORN

There are thousands of kinds of corn. Sweet corn is sweet and easy to chew. Indian corn (see photo, left) comes in many colors. Field corn is used to feed animals. Flour corn is used to make corn meal. Then there's popcorn. Guess what that's used for!

GET LOST

Have you ever wandered through a field of tall corn? It's an easy place to get lost in--and a great place to play tag. A couple of companies even make mazes out of cornfields (below). These huge mazes can cover an area the size of four football fields and include more than two miles of pathways. The big mazes are planted in different shapes, from dinosaurs and dragons to whales and riverboats.

CORN EXPLOSION

What puts the POP in popcorn? As popcorn is heated, water inside the kernel turns to steam. When the kernel can't hold the steam in any longer, the starch in the kernel explodes. Pop!

Some South American Indian people have been popping corn for thousands of years. One way was to cook an ear of corn in the fire, like a potato. Another way was to lay a flat stone on a fire. When the stone got hot, the people spread popcorn kernels on it. The kernels popped right out of the fire!

GOT MILK?

English colonists in North America served popcorn with cream and sugar for breakfast, like bowls of puffed cereal.

Only one in every hundred ears of corn grown in this country ends up being eaten by people. Most corn is grown to feed animals such as hogs and chickens.

CORNY CONSTRUCTION

For more than 75 years, people in the town of Mitchell, South Dakota, have gotten together every year to celebrate corn. During the last week of September, they build a Corn Palace. They totally cover a concrete building with corn!

How? First, local farmers grow corn of many colors--pink, orange, brown, green, gray, and even black. Then the "corn-struction" workers attach the colorful ears to the building (below). They use 100,000 ears to make huge pictures and patterns. They also use thousands of bushels of other grains, grasses, and weeds.

The corn "paintings" have to stand up to South Dakota's high winds. Pigeons and squirrels go for all that free corn too!

THINK IT'LL FLOAT?

You never know where corn will pop up! The popcorn-covered float (above) is part of a Popcorn Festival given every year in the hometown of Orville Redenbacher, who helped develop a popular kind of popcorn.

MANY USES OF CORN

Corn is used to make an amazing number of products. For example, corn oil and corn syrup are used in many other foods, from margarine and peanut butter to marshmallows, ice cream, and hot dogs.

Chemicals from corn are also used to make things you'd NEVER eat, including ethanol (a kind of alcohol), batteries, fireworks, paint, shoe polish, and crayons. Today, corn is even being used to make new kinds of plastic.

Just think--where will corn show up next?

OOOOH, OUCH! THIS HOT ROAD IS KILLING MY FEET!

Copyright 1999 by the National Wildlife Federation.