. Bulletin. Natural history; Science. Experimental plantings of teosinte and hybrids in the University of Chicago greenhouse. Teosinte can be grown at this latitude only if amount of sunlight is regulated. Plants here are wheeled into a dark shed in early afternoon and brought out again in the morning. To jump ahead now forty years, shortly before my retirement from academic administration I received a copy of Garrison Wilkes's 1966 monograph Teosinte, the Closest Relative ot Maize. It is by far the best and most useful document on the subject I know. I read it with great interest and admirati
. Bulletin. Natural history; Science. Experimental plantings of teosinte and hybrids in the University of Chicago greenhouse. Teosinte can be grown at this latitude only if amount of sunlight is regulated. Plants here are wheeled into a dark shed in early afternoon and brought out again in the morning. To jump ahead now forty years, shortly before my retirement from academic administration I received a copy of Garrison Wilkes's 1966 monograph Teosinte, the Closest Relative ot Maize. It is by far the best and most useful document on the subject I know. I read it with great interest and admiration, qualified by a deeply felt reservation on noting in one passage his characterization of the maize-from- teosinte hypothesis as a "crude" attempt to explain the origin of corn, and in another as the "myth" that teosinte is corn's ancestor. In retrospect I realized I over-reacted to those terms because of not appreciating the full context in which they were used. Through correspondence we argued the matter of corn's origin without coming to any agreement. I was, however, stimulated enough to decide that on retirement I would return to a study of the relation of teosinte to corn. I should add, before elaborating, that Wilkes and I have remained good friends and have collaborated in two teosinte collecting trips in Mexico. I believe I have influenced his thinking to some degree. I know he has mine, though I remain firm in my belief that teosinte is the true and only wild corn. How did I propose to study further the relation of the two? I decided to grow large-scale populations of second- generation and backcross populations of corn-leosinte hybrids—larger than anyone had grown before, in order better to estimate the magnitude of the genetic difference between them. The first cross was between Chapalote corn, a primitive variety and the most teosinte-like that was clearly corn, and Chaico teosinte, the most corn-like teosinte that was unmistakably teosinte.
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