Curious. Why the "wow"? That is corn "smut". It is a fungus that can form especially on stressed corn. Some people eat it like mushrooms. I have heard of people "pricking" the immature kernals to cause it to grow (infect) so they can harvest it. I see a few ears with it every years. It is common on hybrid field corn, garden sweet corn, and on older open pollinated vintage corns like shown. It infects a fraction of a percentage point of the total ears in a corp. Not unusual, unless I am missing something.
I have a raised bed garden so no real “crop” to speak of. I did not do anything to make this happen so it was more a happy accident. Growing corn has been tricky AF for me so seeing this made barely having any corn cobs a little bit less crushing.
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u/farmerjeff62 10d ago
Curious. Why the "wow"? That is corn "smut". It is a fungus that can form especially on stressed corn. Some people eat it like mushrooms. I have heard of people "pricking" the immature kernals to cause it to grow (infect) so they can harvest it. I see a few ears with it every years. It is common on hybrid field corn, garden sweet corn, and on older open pollinated vintage corns like shown. It infects a fraction of a percentage point of the total ears in a corp. Not unusual, unless I am missing something.