Bloody Butcher
PI 2300320-Among the most recognizable of heirloom field corns, this 16 row purple red dent corn regularly topped 60 bushels an acre in production. Its color inspired its name. In the heyday of corn palaces (ag exhibition buildings whose surfaces were patterned with different colored ears), it supplied the lurid red. Its ears were large and well populated with kernels; for a large corn it dried down particularly well. Meal had a rich flavor, with a touch of blueberry intermingled with deep corn wholesomeness. From 1850 to 1950 it had many devotees, and was grown from Texas to Connecticut. In the corn belt it was planted in early April and harvested after the middle of October. We are fortunate in having an early commentator on the origin of Bloody Butcher. J. H. Klippert in the Thirteenth Annual Report of the Ohio State Board of Agriculture (1858) provided a commentary of the several dozen maize varieties grown as crops in Ohio in the mid-19th century. In this survey he noted the genealogy of Bloody Butcher:
“Bloody Butcher—This is a hybrid between the Hackberry Dent and Red, and is considerably grown in the bottoms . It matures about the first of October in the norther portion of the State, and from ten days to two weeks earlier in the southern. Each stalk bears one ear with twelve to sixteen rows, and is of medium to large size, and dull yellow red and striped colors, and is a soft variety.” [p. 520] Some comment is required to make sense of this genealogy. Hackberry Corn was one of the early expressions of dent corns, possessing more the gourdseed side of parentage than the flint side. “The grains are long, pointed, generally sound, and are of a dull yellow color, thought sometimes speckled grains may be seen” [Klippert, 519].
The Red Corn was Red Flint, that had occasional stripes in it, and was a variety found among the Muskogee and Shawnee. It differed somewhat from the Floriani red flint that Italians secured from the West Indies during the 16th century with fatter, rounder kernels. Crosses between flint corn and gourdseed produced dent corn, and so did crosses between flint and a gourdseed style proto dent such as Hackberry. Bloody Butcher is decidedly a dent corn.Seed selection in bloody butcher made it more prolific, supplying a second ear on the stalk, little striping, and deeper red coloration. Yet soil quality and rain will trigger atavistic traits—pointy kernels like the Hackberry ancestor, yellow with red coloration, and shorter ears. Spacing also influences the corn. The more leeway between plants, the greater the vitality and productivity. Because of its high carotene and anthocyanin levels, distillers interested in bourbons that have intrinsic corn flavor have been using bloody butcher as a still corn. Clemson University did genetic analyses of Bloody Butcher along with numbers of populations of South Carolina’s Jimmy Red corn, another southern dark red dent, and found them distinct types.
https://npgsweb.ars-grin.gov/gringlobal/accessiondetail?id=1183300