ISSUE 84, SOUTHERN LANDRACE & HEIRLOOM CORN, Part 2: Bland's Extra Early
Bland’s Extra Early [Rareripe White Flint]
Bland’s Extra Early is a select form of landrace white hominy or Rareripe corn, Virginia’s favorite grits corn in the 18th and early 19th century. Selected by Virginian seedsman T W Wood of Richmond and named after a 19th-century farmer who maintained the strain, it was introduced to southern farmers in 1908 as a rival to Adams Extra Early, the North’s favorite early white flint corn. Adam’s Extra Early is an 8 row flint with narrow cobs. As the illustration below inicates, Bland’s Extra Early is a 10 or 12 row flint.
Rareripe corn was a prolific white flint corn; that is, it tended to set two ears per stalk instead of one, the usual for landrace flint corns. Virginia grain broker Ed Hallam ran ads in local gazettes throughout January 1811 indicating he carried seed for “early rareripe corn.” In Frankfort, Kentucky a public minded fellow styling himself “the Western Citizen” counseled readers of the April 9, 1808 issues of the Palladium, “In order to feed your stock in winter, you should raise the hard flint, or what some call the rare ripe corn” (2).
How did Rareripe corn get that name? Captain John Smith mentioned Rareripe corn in 1619, noting the Natives sometimes managed two plantings in a growing season since it grew to maturity in a little over two months, making it the earliest of all corn varieties in terms of availability for consumption.This quick maturation trait won it the designation of Rareripe.
Thomas Jefferson referenced “rare ripe” in the following 1787 message to Nicholas Lewis: “I had at Monticello a species of small white rare ripe corn which we called Homony-corn, and of which we used to make about 20 barrels a year for table use, green in homony, and in bread.” In short, this rapid maturing white flint corn was lye-treated, following the Native American mode of processing, cooked and consumed whole [big hominy] and also ground for white flint corn bread. In most parts of the settler South white grits and white corn bread were the decided preference until the 20th century spread of Corn Belt Yellow Dent grits and meal from the Midwest. Bland’s Extra Early produces 6 inch long ears on white cobs of 10-12 rows. Its quickness to mature insured a market for the first half of the 20th century. Indeed it matured a week before Extra Early Adams, making it the first corn to market. Bland’s Extra Early is preserved in the USDA grains collection as PI 698339: https://npgsweb.ars-grin.gov/gringlobal/accessiondetail?id=1032641 . Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello maintains seed for the variety as well.