Corn ( lat. Zea ) - a genus of plants of the family Cereals ( Poaceae ), including six species [4] . However, in culture, the genus is represented by the only Zea mays species, cultivated worldwide on an industrial scale and is an important food, feed and industrial crop.
| Corn | |||||||||||||||||||||||
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 Sweet corn ( Zea mays ). Flowering plant group | |||||||||||||||||||||||
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Zea L. , 1753 [2] | |||||||||||||||||||||||
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Zea mays L. [3] | |||||||||||||||||||||||
Content
- 1 Etymology
- 2 Biological Description
- 2.1 Types
- 3 notes
- 4 Literature
Etymology
The Latin name for corn - Zea - comes from other Greek. ζειά , which was used as the name of one of the types of wheat - Triticum spelta L., which was widely cultivated in Europe from the Bronze Age to the Middle Ages.
The name of corn in most European languages ( Russian maize , English maize , Spanish maíz , fr. and Netherlands. maïs , dumb Mais , ital. mais , swede. majs , fin. maissi , etc.) comes from mahiz - this is how corn was called in the Taino language , which was distributed in most of the Antilles before the Europeans came here and belonged to the Arawak family of Native American languages; in addition to maize , the words canoe , kasik (leader), tobacco , sweet potato came to Europe from the language of the Taino people.
For the first time, the word mahiz is mentioned in the Diary of the third voyage of Christopher Columbus (1500): “ mahiz , that is, a seed that creates an ear, [having something] like a cob [maçorca], from which I brought there [to Spain], and there are already a lot of it in Castile " [5] . In 1555, Bartolome de Las Casas confirmed that the word mahiz comes from the island of Hispaniola [6] .
The word with different spellings was mentioned by many Spanish chroniclers: mayz and maiz by (1519) [7] , Gonzalo Jimenez de Quesada (1550) [8] , Pedro Ciez de Leon in the first part of the Chronicle of Peru (1553) [9] and in the second part of the Chronicle (1554) [10] ), as well as among Pedro de Valdivia (mid-16th century), Nicolas Monardes (1571) [11] , (1572-1575), Bernal Diaz del Castillo (1574) [12] , Pedro de Aguado (1575), Juan de Castellanos (c. 1580) [13] , Cabello Balboa (1586) [14] , Jose de Acosta (1589-1590) [15] ; the most complete first scientific study and description of the plant was carried out by (1591) [16] ; Bernabe Cobo (1653) in his History of the New World cited the names of this plant in various Indian languages: “The name maize comes from the island of Hispaniola; the Mexicans call it tlaolli , and the people of Peru call it sara [zara] in the Quechua language , and in the aymara language it is subtly [tonco] ” [17] .
The etymology of the word corn in Russian and other Slavic ( Ukrainian corn , Polish. Kukurydza , Czech. Kukuřice , Slovak. Kukurica siata , Serbochor. Corn , Slovenian. Koruza ), as well as the Baltic ( lit. paprastasis kukurūzas ) languages are not so unambiguous. These words come either from the words that existed in a number of Slavic languages with the meaning curly ( Slovenian. Kukúrjav ), as well as the Bulgarian. kuyurok , either from the names of this plant in Turkish (Turkish . kokoros - corn stalk) or Romanian ( rum. cucuruz - fir cone) dialects, or even from the onomatopoeic kukuru when calling a poultry when it is fed with corn grains [18] . P. Ya. Chernykh is inclined towards Slavic etymology, also pointing out that this word entered the Russian language in the first half of the 19th century from somewhere in the south, probably through Ukrainian means from the Balkan Peninsula [19] .
Biological Description
Corn is a tall annual herbaceous plant reaching a height of 3 m (in exceptional cases, up to 6 m or more), with a well-developed root system. At the lower nodes of the stem, air support roots may form.
The stem is erect, up to 7 cm in diameter, without a cavity inside (unlike most other cereals).
The leaves are large, linear-lanceolate, up to 10 cm wide and 1 m long, with a sheath covering the stem.
Spikelets with stamen and pistillate flowers are collected in various inflorescences or in separate parts of one inflorescence. Stamen flowers are collected two in two spikelets, one of them is almost sessile, the other is on the stem, spikelets are collected in the apical panicle. Spikelets with pistillate flowers sit in rows of 6-16 flowers on a thick, fleshy axis of the cob , emerging in the middle part of the stem from the axils of the leaves . The stigma is long, threadlike, bilobate at the end. During flowering, the stigmas of all spikelets hang in the form of a bundle of vaginal leaves surrounding the ear.
The fruit is a caryopsis .
Views
In total, there are six types of corn [4] . However, all corn cultivated as an agricultural plant belongs to the subspecies Zea mays subsp. mays ; sometimes this subspecies is defined as a separate species of Zea saccharata Sturtev
- Zea diploperennis Iltis, Doebley & R. Guzmán
- Zea luxurians (Durieu & Asch.) RMBird
- Zea mays L.
- Zea mexicana (Schrad.) Kuntze
- Zea nicaraguensis Iltis & BFBenz
- Zea perennis (Hitchc.) Reeves & Mangelsd.
Notes
- ↑ For the conventionality of indicating the class of monocotyledons as a superior taxon for the plant group described in this article, see the APG Systems section of the Monocotyledonous article .
- ↑ Sp. Pl. 2: 971.1753
- ↑ Information on the genus Zea in the Index Nominum Genericorum database of the International Association for Plant Taxonomy (IAPT) .
- ↑ 1 2 Species of the genus Zea according to The Plant List .
- ↑ Colón. Diario del primer y tercer viaje de Cristóbal Colón, Edición de Consuelo Varela, en Fr. B. de las Casas, Obras completas, tomo 14, Madrid, Alianza Editorial, 1989, p. 185
- ↑ Bartolome de las Casas, Selected Works
- ↑ Martín Fernández de Enciso, Summa de Geografía que trata de todas las partidas y prouincias del mundo: en especial de las indias y trata largamente del arte de marear [...], Sevilla, Jacobo Cronberger, 1519, p. 135.
- ↑ Gonzalo Jiménez de Quesada, Epítome de la Conquista del Nuevo Reino de Granada (1550), in the book Demetrio Ramos, Ximénez de Quesada en su relación con los cronistas y el Epítome de la Conquista del Nuevo Reino de Granada, Seviones CS de la EEHA de Sevilla, 1972, p. 295.
- ↑ Pedro Cieza de Leon. Chronicle of Peru. Part one.
- ↑ Pedro Cieza de Leon. Chronicle of Peru. Part two. Dominion of the Incas.
- ↑ Nicolás Monardes, Segvnda parte del libro, de las cosas qve se traen de nuestras Indias Occidentales, que siruen al vso de medicina [...], Sevilla, Alonso Escriuano, Impressor, 1571, p. 108
- ↑ Bernal Diaz. The true story of the conquest of New Spain
- ↑ Castellanos, p. 75, 78, 247-248
- ↑ Miguel Cabello Valboa, Miscelánea Antártica. Una historia del Perú Antiguo (1586), Lima, Instituto de Etnología, Universidad Mayor de San Marcos, 1951, p. 182
- ↑ José de Acosta, Historia natural y moral de las Indias, en qve se tratan las cosas notables del cielo, y elementos, metales, plantas, y animales dellas [...] (Sevilla, Juan de León, 1590), edición de Edmundo O 'Gorman, México, FCE, 1962, p. 332
- ↑ Juan de Cárdenas, Primera Parte de los Problemas y secretos marauillosos de las Indias, México, Pedro Ocharte, 1591 [Facs .: Madrid, “Colección de Incunables Americanos, siglo XVI”, ECH, 1945].
- ↑ Cobo, Historia, Vol. I, p. 162.
- ↑ Fasmer M. Etymological Dictionary of the Russian Language. - Progress, 1964-1973. - T. III. - S. 407.
- ↑ Chernykh P. Ya. Historical and etymological dictionary of the modern Russian language. - Russian language, 1999. - T. 1. - S. 451-452.
Literature
- Rozhevits R. Yu. Rod Corn - Zea // Flora of the USSR : in 30 tons / chap. ed. V.L. Komarov . - L .: Publishing House of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR , 1934. - T. 2 / ed. volumes R. Yu. Rozhevits , B.K. Shishkin . - S. 4-5. - 778, XXXIII p. - 5175 copies.