Corn: Fruit, Vegetable, or Grain?

I think my random brain cells have the energy to talk about corn today.

Mom went home with some corns and I immediately get one and eat. It's not that I love eating corn but we seldom have corn in our house so when mom brought some I always have the urge to eat even though I have a bad memory about corn back when I was a kid.

As I eat this corn, I wonder if it is considered as fruit or vegetables. Then I am not sure why I thought of wheat and added grain in the options. Most probably agriculture people already knew the answer and can comment whether it is a fruit, a veggie, or grain, even without reading this article. That's good, I'll be able to get the answer from the experts mweheh.

Without further ado, based on what I researched on the internet, corn is considered as vegetable, fruit, and grain. What?? Yup I somehow feel dizzy haha so I dug deeper and saw this article.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.popsci.com/is-corn-fruit-vegetable-or-grain/%3famp

According to this, a single corn stalk has numerous ears (which are the plant's female parts) and one tassel at the top (which, as you can guess, is the male part). Pollen, often known as plant semen, is produced by the tassel. Those ears are effectively a hard cylinder coated in hundreds of unfertilized ovules before they resemble the luscious kernel-covered cob you eat. Each of these ovules has a single silk strand that extends up and out of the husk's top, dangling in the hopes of capturing pollen on its sticky hairs. If it does, the silk develops a pollen tube, which allows the male genes to reach the ovule and fertilize it.

Depending on the parts of the plant we eat, we distinguish between fruits and vegetables. According to Marvin Pritts, a horticulture expert and professor at Cornell University, "if we eat the component generated from the ovaries or other reproductive tissue, we term it a fruit." Everything else is referred to as a vegetable. "Maize is technically a fruit because it is a seed derived from the flower/ovary of the corn plant," he says.

Corn is a caryopsis, which is a form of fruit in which the seed coat is closely bonded with the pericarp (the fleshy section, similar to the part of a peach you eat). This implies they don't have a thick meaty covering, which aids in drying. Caryopses are also known by their popular name, grains.

Grains are thus a type of fruit. Corn, like wheat, millet, and oats, is both a grain and a fruit, hence it's a hybrid.

This gets us to the last part of the puzzle: is corn a vegetable? The answer is no, both botanically and scientifically. But here's the thing: "vegetable" is practically useless in everyday speech since it's utterly arbitrary.

There's a good, if philosophical, case to be made for sticking with the category that most people use. Maybe squashes are veggies if people think of them that way. Corn could be in the same boat. Pritts, for one, acknowledges that humans consume corn like other vegetables, but points out that this does not constitute it one. However, many individuals, including the US Department of Agriculture, consider corn to be a vegetable, and as "vegetable" is an arbitrary catch-all category, corn may also be considered a vegetable.

Then what's the answer? It's up to y'all hahaha each category holds good argument so whatever it may be just enjoy your corn 😂🌽

Thanks for stopping by!