2. Purple Corn Description
Habit: Annual, vigorous herb with an erect, many-noded, solid stem, rather than the hollow one of most other grasses. It varies widely in height, and oscillates between 60 cm tall at maturity in some dwarf cultivars, and more than 6 m in the gigantic cultivars. Most commercial varieties are near 2.4 m tall. Zea mays L. ‘Kculli’ is 1.8 m to 2.4 m tall. The main stalk terminates in a staminate (male) inflorescence, or tassel. The root is fibrous and fascicled, often with prop roots from the lower nodes.
Leaves: Alternate, linear to linear-lanceolate, long and expanded or narrow. The leaf blades vary in color, according to cultivar or variety, between light green and dark green, and the color can be modified by brown-, red- or purple-colored pigments and be variegated white, yellow or purple-red.
Zea mays L. ‘Kculli’ has dark-green leaves, with purple main nerves.
Flowers: The flowers are monoecious (individual flowers are either male or female, but both sexes can be found on the same plant). The male flowers are disposed at the top of the stem, at the highest part of the plant, in erect or spreading racemes forming a panicle 30 cm or more long. This male inflorescence or tassel is a panicle constituted by many small flowers called spikelets, disposed in pairs, one sessile, the other pedicelled, those of each pair alike, 8 mm to 12 mm long, awnless.
Glumes are papery, equal, enclosing florets. Each one of the florets possesses 3 small anthers that produce pollen grains or male gametes.
The pistillate (female) inflorescence, or ear, is a unique axillary structure variable in size and shape, known as ear, borne on a short branch with several short internodes with a papery sheath at each node, bracts or modified leaves; these forming the husk and enclosing the thick central axis (cob) on which the spikelets are arranged in more or less longitudinal rows; with up to 1 000.
Spikelets are in pairs, both sessile, awnless, 2-flowered, the lower floret small, rarely female, the upper one female; glumes broad, rounded or notched at apex, fleshy towards base.
The ear is enclosed in silky fibers or hairs that protrude from the tip of the ear, and are the elongated styles, each attached to an individual ovary, sessile and ovate. Pollen from the tassels is carried by the wind and falls onto the silk, where it germinates and grows down through the silk until it reaches the ovary. Each fertilized ovary grows and develops into a kernel.
Zea mays L. is an anemophile species; this means that the wind is responsible for carrying the pollen grains from the male flowers toward the female ones. This open-pollination species are self-pollinated.
Fruit: The fruits are caryopsides variable as to size, shape, color and sugar-starch content: roundish or reniform; they are commonly arranged in 8 rows on a large cylindrical receptacle or rachis, popularly called the cob. The length of the mature ear oscillates between 7.5 cm and 50 cm, with 8 to 36 or more grain rows.
The cultivars or forms are distributed in six groups according to the characteristics of the ripe fruit or grain. In the forms used in order to obtain corn meal predominates soft starch or scarcely compact starch, which facilitates milling. In the sweet cultivars, the most cultivated for human food, the sugar produced by the plant does not becomes starch, as occurs in other cultivars. The kernel of ripe sweet corn presents a typical wrinkling.
The color of grains varies. They can be white, yellow, red, purple, brown, green and blue. Zea mays L. ‘Kculli’ has purple kernels and cob.
The most precocious cultivars reach maturity within two months; the latest ones, within eleven. Zea mays L. ‘Kculli’ requires 91 to 100 days.
Chromosomes: 2n = 20.