I have a row of corn that's planted densely. I planted them twice as close as recommended. The reason I did that was an experiment of sorts. In some past years, when I would harvest the corn, there would be "blanks" in the kernels. The somewhat empty heads were caused by poor pollination. To try to mitigate that, I planted them very close, hoping that with more pollen in a smaller area, there would be a better likelihood of fertilization. We'll see.
There are two varieties of sweet corn planted on the 15 foot row. One is Stowell's Evergreen Sweet Corn and the other, I think (I neglected to write it down), was Country Gentleman Corn. As you can see, the corn is tasseling.
The corn tassel is the male reproductive organ of the corn. You might remember this lesson from the movie, "Grease." The pollen dangles from the tassel and the pollen falls down onto the silk of the ear.
Here is the silk. When the pollen falls on the silk, the ear is fertilized. Each strand of silk will produce a kernel of corn, if fertilized. What you have to worry about is sometimes the corn will tassel before the silk is present. Sometimes wind or weather affects pollination. Some people, in order to ensure pollination, will cut the tassel off with scissors and will manually pollinate the ear, by rubbing the two together. My garden is small enough to do that, but I figure the corn can do that on its own without me intervening.
Here are the tassels of another variety:
The silk on this variety is RED!
The phenomenon where the tassel and ear is on the same structure is called "tassel ear corn". There are several reasons this happens: it can happen on the suckers when the growing point is damaged, or where there is low plant density (we know it's not this), or where the soil is compacted or too wet.
We will be watching for the tassels to turn brown. At that point we will harvest and do our normal celebratory tradition of shucking and eating the first corn raw, standing in the corn row.
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