The Important Differences Between Corn And Maize.
The Important Differences Between Corn And Maize: Corn and maize are used conversely. Corn is a term used among North Americans. It is one of the world’s most general cereal grains, it’s the seed of a plant in the grass family. Corn and maize are different terms used to describe the same thing.
The word ‘maize’ comes from the original name of the plant given by the Taino, one of the famous peoples of the Bahamas and Antilles islands. In British English, corn simply means cereal.
Etymology of Corn
The English word ‘corn’ origin is the proto-Germanic ‘kurnam,’ which also yields across a period of centuries into the words kernel and grain. The word has commonly been used to denote the primary grain crop in a given area.
In England, the word was commonly used to indicate wheat, while in Scotland it was oats and in parts of Germany ‘korn’ was understood to mean rye.
Corn
In most countries, corn is the name given to the leading crop grown in specific districts. In England, “corn” means wheat, while in Ireland and Scotland, it relates to oats while in the Bible, corn is nothing but wheat and barley.
But, in the USA and Canada corn and maize are one and the same and are meant for the plant that produces kernels used for cooking. The term corn is mostly preferred over maize for food products that are made from it, such as corn starch, corn flour or cornmeal, etc.
Regarding to commodity trading, corn is only maize and does not include any other grains. In culinary, the corn is commonly mentioned as baby corn, sweet corn, popcorn, dent corn, flint corn, cornflakes, flour corn, and waxy corn.
Maize
Maize was subdued over 7,000 years ago in what is now Mexico from a wild grass called teosinte. It is greatly easier to cultivate than other grains and it requires no laborious cutting and threshing.
Its cultivation spread all over Central and North America, where Columbus discovered it and brought it back to Europe. The name maize originates with the famous Taino people in the Caribbean, and is the name used in most European languages to denote ‘Indian corn,’ or grain from the New World.
Maize originates from its Mexican variant called teosinte. It also has a single erect solid stem with long and narrow leaves that grow alternately, while teosinte is small and bushy. The difference in their appearance is the variation in their two genes.
Maize and Teosinte can be subjected to cross breeding to make fertile offspring. The maize is now known to be one of the main grain crops in the world.
Old farmers in Mexico are known to be the first to domesticate maize. They also noticed that the plants were not at all the same in appearance. Some grew very large compared to others, and some kernels were tastier. So the farmers selected the best ones that got desired characteristics and cultivated them for the next harvest season. This process was usually called selective breeding, from which the modern maize originates.
The Important Differences Between Corn And Maize
- Corn describes the cereal in British English.
- The word ‘corn’ has a lot of meanings relying upon the geographical areas.
- Corn is also a crop which is produced all over the United Kingdom while Maize is extensively cultivated in America in many varieties; the principal cereal in Mexico and Central and South America since pre-Columbian situations.
- The word ‘maize’ is frequent in nations like Canada, New Zealand, and the United States while Corn is frequent in European nations.
- Maize is also a time gap that is used for the plant which is not cooked or nonetheless raw on the branches of the cob. Corn is the word which is used for the maize which has been cooked and in a position to eat.