THE POPCORNS OF TURKEY EDGAR ANDERSON, Missouri Botanical Garden AND WILLIAM L. BROWN, Pioneer Hi-Bred Corn Company The special significance of popcorns in the history of maize has been recognizedby many students of that perennially fascinating problem (see, for instance, Sturte-vant, 1894, Mangelsdorf, 1948). To scientists at large, however, the classificationof popcorns and the description of the various ways in which they are used havebeen matters of such little moment that we were eventually driven to making ourown world survey of popcorns and their uses (see Anderson and Cutler, 1950, fora general discussion). It was not until a decade of research had taught us toinquire in some of the most unlikely places that we learned (through VolneyJones) that popcorn is commonly used throughout Turkey and is a characteristicfeature of many Turkish villages. At the very moment when we were endeavoringto have a comprehensive collection made for us there, Dr. Jack Harlan returnedfrom that country with a collection of economic plants made for the Division ofPlant Exploration and Introduction of the United States Department of Agricul-ture. Fifty-four collections of popcorn made by Dr. Harlan and his collaboratorsform the basis of the following report. We are indebted to Dr. Harlan for variousobservations supplementing the unusually complete data turned over to us by theDepartment of Agriculture, and to Dr. M. M. Hoover and his staff of the RegionalIntroduction Station at Ames, Iowa. It is a pleasure to acknowledge the efficiencyand courtesy of this entire organization. We were welcomed to the increase plotsin good weather and in bad, our attention was called to other collections of possiblesignificance, and we were supplied promptly with viable seed of ail the cultureswe wanted to grow. For a few varieties of particular interest pertinent informa-tion was quickly produced from the files, and remnant seed of the original collec-tions was made available to us. The 54 Turkish popcorns collected by Dr. Harlan were grown in the experi-mental plots of the Pioneer Hi-Bred Corn Company at Johnston, Iowa, 20-30plants being grown of each collection. A few varieties of particular interest weregrown in replicate, and flint varieties and flint-dent mixtures from Dr. Harlan'scollections were available for comparison in another plot. Each variety was scoredfor morphological uniformity, for season, for tassel type. Detailed measurementswere taken on plant height, ear height, ear number, number of leaves above theear, leaf length, leaf width, tassel exsertion, internode length and internode pattern,the width of the central spike of the tassel, glume length, the number of tertiarybranches on the lowermost secondary branch of the tassel, the number of branch-lets of the fourth order (if any), the number of secondary tassel branches, andthe pubescence of the leaf sheath. At harvest time the plants were scored forhusk number, for number of apparent nodes in the shank (the difference betweenthese two numbers represents the number of condensed [telescoped] nodes of the (33)
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