Corn is physically an obligate symbiosis co-created by humans and their fields
Evidence
Of all the materials, why is it that people of corn would inherit the earth, rather than people of mud or wood or light? Could it be that people made of corn are beings transformed? For what is corn, after all, but light transformed by relationship? Corn owes its existence to all four elements: earth, air, fire, and water. And corn is the product of relationship not only with the physical world, but with people too. The sacred plant of our origin created people, and people created corn, a great agricultural innovation from its teosinthe ancestor. Corn cannot exist without us to sow it and tend its growth; our beings are joined in an obligate symbiosis. From these reciprocal acts of creation arise the elements that were missing from the other attempts to create sustainable humanity: gratitude, and a capacity for reciprocity. — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass, 1255
Categorization
- XREF: Corn as obligate symbiosis pays off the Three Sisters domestication chapters and grounds the reciprocity ethic in a botanical fact usable across courses. — connects to: Garden food arises from human-plant partnership where each supplies what the other cannot — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom,…, 444; Food plants and humans shape each other’s evolution toward mutual thriving — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom,…, 431; Some plants now depend on specific human harvesting practices to survive — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing: Resisting the…, 499
- ADDENDUM: Corn as ‘light transformed by relationship’ fits the Grafting & Growth trees piece as parallel plant-human co-evolution showing domestication is mutual transformation.
Broader Connections
- Some plants now depend on specific human harvesting practices to survive
#expands(0.88) — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing, 499 - Food plants and humans shape each other’s evolution toward mutual thriving
#corroborates(0.82) — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass, 431