ISSUE 84, SOUTHERN LANDRACE & HEIRLOOM CORN, Part: Guinea Flint
Guinea Flint
Short eared, dense packed with starch and flavor, the small yellow flint corn grown in the American Southeast since before European contact, was for much of its history cherished as a superlative feed corn for livestock. White flint—whether the long-eared Sea Island White Flint—or the short eared Rare Ripe corn of the Upper South—stood foremost in favor by settlers for whole hominy, for grits, and for cornbread until the end of the 19th century. The short-eared flint grow on a smaller plant than most other southern maize varieties, scarcely the size of an adult field worker. One strain found in the upper South had red cobs. Along the coast it had white, as you can see from the image above. For most of its history it was advertised as “yellow flint” or “small yellow flint.” In newspaper advertisements, the narrow, eight row long eared New England Yellow Flint Corn was distinguished from the southern. Because of its extremely short season, some planters tried growing the northern strains, with modest success.
Guinea flint was a name that became used in South Carolina and Georgia for a prolific strain of small yellow flint. If well spaced, a stalk would set from three to six ears, sometimes clustered in nodes. It was called Guinea Flint because it was thought that African born farmers tweaked the plant to make it prolific. One improbable tale in oral tradition has the corn crossing the Atlantic to Africa and coming back as a prolific strain. Since maize was not indigenous or even familiar in 18th and early 19th century West Africa, such expert manipulation of epigenetics sounds suspicious. In the South more than a few intelligent enslaved Africans ran away and sough incorporation into Native bands. Perhaps the strain was developed by one of these bold spirits.
Small Yellow Flint/Guinea Flint was grow in North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana. The non-prolific strain in Louisiana was known as Yellow Creole Corn and famous in Cajun cookery. The USDA’s accessions—named “Indian Flint”—were collected in North Carolina, which was exporting the corn to coastal cities throughout the 19th century. See this ad from the December 3, 1860 issue of the Charleston Mercury:
Horticulturists of the West Indies in the 1950s identified a yellow-orange variety, “Coastal Tropical,” that is no doubt related, if not ancestral to this southeastern variety. It has the 10-12 row girth of Guinea Flint and the eight inch-long truncated ear.
Genetic analysis will eventually reveal the precise relation of Guinea Flint to Coastal Tropical, and South American landraces that have recently been employed by Joshua Gochenour to breed Coteto Sulino corn, a variety that bears some resemblance to the Southeast’s old locally-adapted variety.
The 21st century brought an aesthetic change in the popular taste for corn. Colored corns, with their carotene and anthocyanin, impart decided flavor to grits and even distilled corn. Greg Johnsman of Marsh Hen Mill in South Carolina has spearheaded the celebration of Guinea Flint, offering it for sale as grits and meal. At the time of writing the first batch of Guinea Flint Corn Whiskey is now aging. We await the revelation of yellow flint’s spiritous resurrection.