Plant

Maize

Zea mays

Also known as: corn, Zea mays, Indian corn

A tall annual grass domesticated from teosinte in southern Mexico ~9,000 years ago — the foundational crop of the Mesoamerican and broader Indigenous American civilizations, and now the world's largest cereal crop by volume. The plant's improbable transformation from a wild grass with a half-dozen kernels per spike into a domesticated grain with hundreds of kernels per cob is one of the most remarkable single acts of plant domestication in human history.

Photo via Wikimedia Commons — see source for license.

Scientific

Zea mays descends from teosinte (Zea mays ssp. parviglumis), a wild grass of the Balsas River valley in southern Mexico. The morphological gulf between teosinte (small, scattered grains in a shattering spike) and modern maize (massive, tightly-packed cobs) reflects thousands of years of selection by Mesoamerican farmers — among the most sustained and intentional acts of [[plant-breeding|plant breeding]] in human history.

Cultural

In Mesoamerican cosmology — the Popol Vuh of the K’iche’ Maya, the agricultural theology of the Mexica, the foundational stories across the Pueblo and broader Indigenous American world — humans are made of corn. The phrase is not metaphor; corn is the substance from which the gods shaped the first people. This is upstream of any agronomic statistic about the plant.

[[three-sisters|The Three Sisters]] complex — maize + beans + squash interplanted — is the Indigenous American foundational polyculture, ecologically sophisticated and nutritionally complete in a way single-crop monocultures are not.

Global production

Top producers: USA, China, Brazil, Argentina, India. The largest grain crop in the world today by tonnage — most of it not eaten directly by humans but funneled into animal feed and ethanol. Roughly 40% of the US maize crop becomes ethanol fuel.

Sources

FAO Crop Statistics
Wikipedia — Maize

A plant entry in the 0mn1.one [[directory]].

Grown by

All listings →

Farms and nurseries in the 0mn1.one directory that grow maize. Each is a real working operation — visit, buy from, learn from.

309 Corn Shack

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lehigh-valley

309 Corn Shack is a seasonal farm stand in New Tripoli specializing in super-sweet Mission VX hybrid corn and fresh Lehigh Valley produce.

Alsum Sweet Corn

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Alsum Sweet Corn — a farm verified in OpenStreetMap. See [[farm]] for the directory's editorial position; this entry may also operate retail surfaces (farm stand, CSA, farmers-market) that should be added as separate relations.

Aris Famous Corn

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Aris Famous Corn — a farm verified in OpenStreetMap. See [[farm]] for the directory's editorial position; this entry may also operate retail surfaces (farm stand, CSA, farmers-market) that should be added as separate relations.

Grism's Sweet Corn

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Grism's Sweet Corn — a farm verified in OpenStreetMap. See [[farm]] for the directory's editorial position; this entry may also operate retail surfaces (farm stand, CSA, farmers-market) that should be added as separate relations.

Harward Farms

substrate builder

wasatch-front

Four-generation Utah farm operating since 1945, growing sweet corn, watermelon, cantaloupe, tomatoes, and peaches alongside certified weed-free hay and straw. Distributes through multiple roadside stands across the Wasatch Front and runs a summer farm camp for kids.

Sweet Corn

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Sweet Corn — a farm verified in OpenStreetMap. See [[farm]] for the directory's editorial position; this entry may also operate retail surfaces (farm stand, CSA, farmers-market) that should be added as separate relations.

What links here, and how

Inbound connections from across the wiki, grouped by lens and by relationship. These appear automatically — every entity page declares what it links to, and that data populates here on the targets.

Scientific

grows

309 Corn Shack name token matches /\bcorn\b/
Alsum Sweet Corn name token matches /\bcorn\b/
Aris Famous Corn name token matches /\bcorn\b/
Grism's Sweet Corn name token matches /\bcorn\b/
Harward Farms body token /\bcorn\b/ near cultivation cue
Sweet Corn name token matches /\bcorn\b/

substrate of

Mesoamerica maize domestication from teosinte (Balsas River valley, Mexico) ~9,000 years BP — the most economically important crop domestication of the Americas

cousin of

Wheat Poaceae kin and third leg of the global cereal trinity — wheat, rice, maize together account for over half of global human caloric intake; each was domesticated in a different center of origin.

Practical

produces

Cultural

shares approach with

Chestnut auto-linked from body mention
Sunflower Eastern Agricultural Complex companion crop — sunflower, maize, beans, and squash were cultivated together by Indigenous peoples of present-day eastern North America millennia before European contact.

Historical

demonstrated by

Columbian exchange maize traveled from Mesoamerica across Europe, Africa, and Asia; African post-Columbian agriculture was substantially restructured around it

General

shares approach with

Barley auto-linked via shared tag: cereal
Common bean auto-linked via shared tag: domesticated
Oats auto-linked via shared tag: cereal
Rice auto-linked via shared tag: cereal
Rye auto-linked via shared tag: cereal
Squash Three Sisters intercrop with maize and beans — the foundational agronomic pattern of Indigenous North American and Mesoamerican agriculture

27 inbound links · 8 outbound

Scientific

Cultural

Global production

See also

Sources

Grown by

309 Corn Shack

Alsum Sweet Corn

Aris Famous Corn

Grism's Sweet Corn

Harward Farms

Sweet Corn

What links here, and how