Corn silks are the stigma of the female corn flower – their scientific name is Stigma Maydis. They are surprisingly rich in phytochemicals, and have been used in traditional medicines throughout the world for a long time. If nothing else, corn silks are another rich plant-based antioxidant, up there with Vitamin C, and that can only be a good thing. (The upper, brownish parts have the highest levels).
Traditionally, corn silk tea is used for urinary related problems – things like cystitis, kidney stones, prostate problems, bedwetting. There’s good evidence that corn silk tea calms the lining of the bladder and the urinary tract and increases urine secretion. That diuretic function also serves to reduce oedema and blood pressure (though if you are already taking a diuretic, it might overdo it and reduce your potassium too much – it’s recommended to avoid corn silk tea if you are taking diuretics, blood thinners, diabetes medications, potassium supplements, or blood pressure drugs).
I’ll keep some dried silks on the shelf and keep it in mind in case of cystitis, but the reason I like drinking corn silk tea routinely is that it reduces LDL or “bad” cholesterol levels, without at the same time affecting HDL or “good” cholesterol. I have the genes for high cholesterol, and though my ratio is good (more good than bad cholesterol), anything that keeps the LDL cholesterol low is a good thing with my genes.
So we get a double harvest from sweet corn. We eat corn on the cob, or creamed corn on toast, or corn pikelets, or charred sweet corn salsa just about every day through the season, and then we drink the corn silks in tea, or dry them for winter. The tea has a faint sweet taste, or its own pretty boring, but mixing it with lemon balm or chamomile makes a nice drink.
Zea mays, Family Poaceae or Gramineae, Corn
For corn to develop, the fine, almost invisible pollen from a male flower at the top of a plant must blow onto the silks on a cob of a neighbouring plant, and be carried down to the kernels of corn within the cob. Without pollination, the kernels fail to develop. That’s why you sometimes get corn with few kernels.
The thing is, corn isn’t incestuous – very little self-pollination occurs. If you have a block of 20 or more plants, the wind will fairly reliably do the job. But if you plant in a row, or just a few plants, the wind can blow the pollen away rather than onto the silks. In my little retrosuburban garden now, I don’t have room really for maize, and I like sequential plantings of sweet corn, half a dozen or so cobs a week rather than 20 at once. So I have to be the wind.
I plant half a dozen seeds a week throughout the season, raising them in pots till they’re 20 cm tall in my standard process of using advanced seedlings to conserve space. As the broccolini and cauliflowers and peas of winter come out, little blocks of sweet corn and beans go in to replace them, and then beans where the sweet corn was and vice versa. When the corn is flowering, I break a bit of flower off each plant and shake it over the silks of its neighbours, and I get nice well-filled cobs, and silks as a by product.
Most of the medicinal use research I found by following links from Corn Silk (Stigma Maydis) in Healthcare: A Phytochemical and Pharmacological Review.
We talk about food security but not so much about medicine security. This is a series about the plants with a good evidence base for medicinal use. They all have garden ecosystem and culinary uses too, so worth growing anyhow, and having them in the growing close at hand might give you a small measure of security in the wild west of late capitalism. You will find the rest of this series by clicking the tag Medicinals
Well! THAT is just incredible info!!!