Logical assumptions that the maize ancestor, Balsas Teosinte Zea mays ssp. parviglumis, was first domesticated for grain need re-examination, for teosinte grains, each permanently imprisoned in a hard CUPULATE FRUIT CASE (CFC), are not accessible for palatable food. Though CFC's are abundant, easy to harvest, store and indestructible, why are they unknown from the older archeology? And how could the key teosinte mutation (Tga 1), opening the CFC's and making grains accessible for use, ever been discovered in the wild -- one so astronomically rare that George Beadle (1971-1973), by visually inspecting some 4 million CFC's in over 40 days, could not find a single one? Must we not assume then a fortuitous, face-to-face discovery by some sharp-eyed horticulturist among plants already semi-domesticated: for sugary pith (alcohol?), green crisp ears, roasted ear clusters, trellises for beans. Must we then not also assume only one mutant, a maizoid "Eve", its naked grains soon protected from predation and, by backcrossing to its semi-wild neighbors, escaping this narrowest of narrow "domestication bottleneck" some 7,000 years ago? Lastly, "unbranched" maizoid phenotypes are automatic density-dependent responses to competition, with primary branches telescoped into subtending leafsheaths, leading to larger ear clusters and ready-made husk systems. With mutated CFC's now "open", human selection of grains commenced, loss of abscission layers and reactivation of suppressed spikelets soon followed, and the sequential maturation arrangement of the ears and competition between ear clusters made the cascade of ever-increasing apical dominance by ever-fewer ears virtually inevitable. As for theories to sexually transmute teosinte tassel spikes into their maize ear homeologs, they are unnecessary explanations of common phenotypic variability, this was well understood but its implications totally missed by this author (See Iltis, in Soderstrom et al. 1987: fig. 1). To quote Mark Twain, "The eye cannot comprehend when the imagination is out of focus."

Key words: corn evolution, Economic Botany luncheon talk, maize domestication