Corn
Striped Japonica

Vibrant ornamental flint corn with multi-colored stripes and crimson-black kernels. Grind kernels into a tasty meal.

About Striped Japonica

(Zea mays) Flint corn. The World’s Most Beautiful Corn Plant! Invite this vibrant ornamental flint corn into your edible landscape design and you won’t regret it. Plants reach 6 feet, with foliage developing brilliant, multi-colored stripes of green, white, pink and yellow. Some stalks may be green, while others may be striped with all four colors. Wine-colored tassels and crimson-black kernels add a tropical touch to borders or container plantings. The sturdy stalks make a fantastic trellis for climbing ornamentals like sweet pea. When dried, the kernels grind into a tasty meal.Native American flint corn was first brought to Japan by the Portuguese in the 1500s; at the time, flint corn was considered primarily a fodder crop for livestock. During the Edo period in Japan (1603-1867), officials of the centralized government (who were mostly vegetarian, for religious reasons) discouraged the consumption of meat and the need for corn to feed livestock plummeted, relegating the newly introduced corn crop to relative obscurity. With the Meiji period (1868-1912), meat was reintroduced to the Japanese diet, and the need for corn as fodder rose. Along the way, it was discovered that corn could be a tasty crop for humans as well. Striped Japonica was bred in Japan, and later introduced to America in the 1870s.We have worked for years to find a pure strain of Striped Japonica, as most on the market were badly contaminated by GMO corn. After much effort, we may now present a strain that tested Non-GMO! Please enjoy this stunning treasure from historic Japan!