ISSUE 84, SOUTHERN LANDRACE & HEIRLOOM CORN, Part 6: Clarage
Clarage
Clarage was Ohio’s default dent corn from the Civil War to World War II. Originally a late season landrace 16-row yellow dent, the plant grew 7 feet 10 inches tall bearing either one or two ears per stalk, the ears being about 6 inches long. The uniform yellow of the kernels was sometimes disrupted by orange/red tinged dent kernels. The kernels grew on a red cob. Well suited to the soils of northern and middle Ohio, it was reckoned both reliable and prolific. Time would eventually show its vulnerability to a host of corn diseases. From the first farmers tweaked the variety, making it mature in 100 days, giving ears an extra one to two inches in length, and rendering the kernels a more uniform yellow. An extra early strain was bred in the 1930s. In the June 23 Bulletin of the Ohio Agricultural Experimental Station (#369), C C Hayden and A E Perkins published an extensive study on the merits of Clarage as a feed corn compared to Blue Ridge, a silage corn, deciding in favor of Clarage. Such findings boosted the popularity of the corn. It was widely grown in Ohio, West Virginia, and Northern Kentucky.
The 1914 C C Vale Seed Catalog from New Carlisle, OH, published the following historical blurb about Clarage: “Clarage: Grown in Ohio for Almost a Century. Probably as widely planted in Ohio as any other variety, and has the longest history of any corn originated in our State. It was grown first by Edmund Clarridge, in Ross County, nearly eighty years ago. Clarage has been the standard variety at the Ohio Experiment Station for nearly twenty years. In all corn tests the other varieties are compared with a corresponding plot of Clarage. This fact alone is sufficient evidence of the worth of Clarage as an early maturing, heavy yielding corn. Description: Ears medium in size, slowly tapering, eight to nine inches in length, with fourteen to eighteen rows of deep, rich golden yellow kernels. Both ends of the ear are well filled. Easy to husk because of the small shank. The cob is medium size and bright red. As to early maturity, all that is necessary to say is that the Ohio Experiment Station. at Wooster, is well north in our State, and in Circular No. 117 they say simply, “It matures safely here.” Prices: Peck, $1.00; one-half bushel, $1.75; bushel, $3.00. On ear or shelled. Reports this last season show Clarage to be a very desirable corn in Michigan, New York, and Pennsylvania, as well as in Ohio.”
An origin in the 1840-1850 period sounds reasonable, since most of the dent corns emerged in the 1830s and 40s. Edmund W. Clarridge 1 (1789-1868) was born in Maryland and moved with his parents to Ross County, Ohio, in 1798. He enlisted in the U. S. Army and served in the War of 1812, settling after the conflict in Madison Township. He developed 160 acres of first rate land, served as the township’s justice of the peace, and terms as township treasurer and clerk. His son Edmund W. Clarridge II continued his father’s agricultural experiments. It was probably Edmund Clarridge II who disseminated the corn in Ohio, for it was not noted by name by John Klippert in his survey of popular Ohio corn varieties undertaken in the late 1850s. Yet it may be that Clarage is intended by Klippert’s entry for “Dent Corn.” [John Klippert, “Chapter XXII The History of Corn,” The Wheat Plant (Cincinnati, 1860), 641-92]. There is no commercial producer of the classic yellow Clarage seed, but it is available from the US small grains germ plasm bank in two iterations—the original late Clarage [PI 278716]: https://npgsweb.ars-grin.gov/gringlobal/accessiondetail?id=1208073 and the early Clarage [PI 218005]: https://npgsweb.ars-grin.gov/gringlobal/accessiondetail?id=1177740 Eichelberger Improved Clarage made the old yellow dent retain its following in the mid-20th century. More productive, disease resistant, and less prone to lodging, it survives in the hands of numbers of mid-western farmers. Michael Kasler and the Scholl Family of Harding County Ohio are growers.
Rotten Clarage-Sometime shortly after the turn of the twentieth century, farmers crossed Clarage with Cherokee White Eagle Corn, and the resultant hybrid had the yellow background populated by numbers of blue kernels. This mingled corn was grown for silage and called “Rotten Clarage.” In was grown regularly until the 1980s in southern Ohio. Now few maintain the strain. Seed for this rare variant is preserved by the Appalachian Heirloom Plant Farm: https://www.appalachianheirloomplantfarm.com/store/p179/Rotten_Clarage_Dent.html
Blue Clarage
Rotten Clarage was manipulated by crosses and by selecting and planting the blue dent kernels until generation after generation reproduced a wholly blue dent ear. How it obtained a white cob is something of a mystery. The several strains of “Ohio Blue” circulating these days display so much genetic variability that some growers fear contamination, and seek out particular strains. Stabilized about the time of WWI, Blue Clarage began appearing in seed catalogs in the early 1920s, for instance the W N Scarff Catalog of 1924. It enjoyed particular favor in the southern parts of Ohio, while yellow Clarage dominated northern Ohio fields. Among its agronomic virtues is a very strong resistance to root worm. Blue has enjoyed a vogue in the first decades of the 21st century used by mills for meal, and distillers for mash. It is the most widely available form of Clarage currently available. Seed is offered by Southern Exposure Seed Exchange and a dozen other sources.