flowers and seeds

more maize news and a touch of corn war morphology...both hopi blue plants have flowered ( the smaller is around forty-seven inches tall and the larger is sixty-two...so far...that's th ebiggeron in front in the top photo )...have a look at the hopi blue flower in the second photo and the gamagrass flower in the third...the structures are similar...yes they are both grasses and the gamagrass flowers are attached to the seeds and the maize flower isn't ( and that's a nascent ear in the fourth photo...i see at least three on the larger maize plant...the sweet corn i grew last season each produced two ears...i'm hoping for more on the tillers growing off the base )..i will have to have a look at the northern tepehuan teosinte flowers from last autumn to see if there's any resemblance there..a touch of evidence for mary eubank's viewpoint perhaps...perhaps not...definitely a similarity...my inland sea oats seeds arrived today so one of the shaded under the locust trees is spoken for for next season at least...if they successfully winter over there will be another perennial bed...they are native to the southern tier of states so there is a bit of a question in my mind about their hardiness in the face of what might not be the mild winter of last year...i also found a source for ramp seeds so the neighboring bed will be sown with wild leeks later this summer...seems they need a stretch of warm weather to break root dormancy and then cold weather to break shoot and stem dormancy...a very early spring crop ( earlier than elephant garlic, i wonder ? ) a mild winter may have the inverse effect on them that a severe one would have on the oats...a wait-and-see proposition...they like to grow in the shade of deciduous trees and like leaf litter mulch...the twenty odd trees in my back yard can make them feel at home and they're a native species and a perennial to boot...win/win.