kessira wrote:
Greetings,

This is going to be a weird question - please bear with me.

I am a librarian working in a special collections library; we get lots
of old volumes with lots of odd things stuck in them (dried flowers,
pictures, etc.) Today, one of my coworkers found several kernels of
corn stuck in the margins of a book called "The gardeners dictionary",
by Philip Miller, published sometime around 1756-1759. Now, we're not
thinking these are 350 year old pieces of corn, but they *could* be.

I've done some searching on corn and planting online, but I can't find
a source that tells me the, well, "shelf-life" of a kernel of corn.
We're intrigued by the idea of planting these and seeing what happens,
but we don't want to go to all the time and bother if these are too
old. If we do end up planting, what would be the best way to prepare
the kernels? Should we soak them in water, or keep them between wet
paper towels, or just put them in some potting soil?

Sorry for all the potentially dumb questions; we have done lots of
gardening, but not with seeds like this!

Thanks,
Joan
Chapel Hill, NC

Corn seeds exposed to the atmosphere have a viable shelf life of
between one and two years. Look at the following link:

http://gardening.about.com/library/weekly/aa022503b.htm

Bill