Pod corn develops leaves in the inflorescences

In a variant of maize known as pod corn, or tunicate maize, the maize kernels on the cob are not 'naked' but covered by long membranous husks known as glumes. According to scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research in Cologne and Friedrich Schiller University in Jena, this variant arises from the activity of a leaf gene in the maize cob that is not usually active there. Thus, pod corn is not a wild ancestor of maize, but a mutant that forms leaves in the wrong place.

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