Today's #CornFax will also be it's own 🧵on a new preprint from yours truly and colleagues!

🌽 Where does maize come from? 🌽

(if threads ain't your thing, the preprint is https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.01.31.526540v1)

Maize doesn't look like other grasses, and this led to more than 100 years of confusion about its origins. Even accomplished 20th century botanists like Edgar Anderson were still unsure of what continent maize came from!

1/8

I don't wanna force #CornFax on anyone (but check out that hashtag if you want some), but this photo of Hugh Iltis is just so damn good I have to share. You can find out more about this amazing botanist, from his work on corn origins to his interrogation of Heinrich Himmler:

https://news.wisc.edu/hugh-iltis-uws-battling-botanist-dies-at-91/