NPR Health and Science Special

¶ … NPR Health and Science special on All Things Considered entitled "Summer Science: Studying Mosquitoes and Corn" is addressed to a general audience. Scientific jargon is understandably avoided in the segment on corn because most listeners only want and need to learn about the general concepts behind corn biology, physiology, and reproduction. However, in the process of oversimplifying corn physiology and reproduction, the farmer speaking to NPR made a few key errors. Using the term "ears" for the female corn inflorescences is understandable, and using the common term "silks" for what are essentially elongated stigmas on the female inflorescences makes sense when the radio audience is NPR listeners without a background in plant physiology. Unfortunately, both the farmer and the interviewer confuse the silk with the tassel: when in fact the former is the pollen receptor, or stigma, on the female plant whereas the tassel is the male inflorescence, or cluster of flowers. The tassel (male inflorescence) contains pollen grains that fertilize the silks (stigmas), which are on the ear shoot. Silk and tassel look similar but the two structures are functionally different. The NPR interviewer uses them synonymously without correction by the farmer.

However, the farmer is correct in emphasizing the importance of the silk and tassel, the stigma and the male inflorescence, in the reproduction of the corn. Moreover, the farmer stresses the relationship between wind and corn fertilization. Pollen grains are "borne in anthers, each of which contains a large number of pollen grains" that emerge only during certain morning hours (Thomison). The farmer in the NPR segment fails to mention the crucial timing involved in corn pollination.