Hot Pink corn silks & tassels

[wannabe]

Ok, I asked this over on TMEN and have pretty much struck out so far as to getting an answer. I made the mistake of titling the thread "Punk Rocker Corn Stalks," which may have made people think it was a joke thread and they didn't bother to open it.

Here is the problem:

Some of my corn stalks have ears with silks that look like a punk-rocker did their hair-do. They have that hot-pinkish somewhat flourescent red color that punkers sometimes dye their hair. The tassels are this color, too. The affected stalks are skinnier than the healthy ones and have shot up a couple feet taller than the healthy ones as well. Some of the affected ones have some kind of blotchy blight on the lower part of the stalk. The few ears on the affected stalks are quite small, but several of the affected ones don't appear to be producing ears at all.

Obviously this is some kind of disease. Does anyone recognize it? Should I be concerned that this will spread to the healthy stalks? Should I pull them out? I wonder if I watered them too much.

[jack]

Gidday

That looks to me like it could be ettin rather than diseased.

[mickee311]

But would a bug make the silk pink like that? Well, I suppose it could, make it stressed out or something.

If nothin else, you could make a wig out of it and go to a Sex Pistols show.

[douglas]

Looks like two kinds of corn to me, what kind was it you planted

[Pharmer Phil]

the pink silks is the variety trait, the lesions are common rust, which on this variety is pinkish red...the oly other cause could be chemical damage, do you garden by any corn/soybean fields?

[wannabe]

Well, I think the variety thing might be it (plus a bit of rust on one stalk). In the mean time we've come to the same conclusion about it over on TMEN.

Initially I planted Northern Xtra Sweet, which is an early 63 day variety. I also ordered some other varieties, but then when I found out you shouldn't plant different varieties together in such a small space as I have, I decided to just stick to the one. I planted some at one time, waited two weeks to plant another batch, and then when some didn't germinate, planted yet some more about a week or so after that in the "holes". HOWEVER... I strongly suspect now that I accidentally grabbed the wrong seed packet on the last planting. My packet of Kandy Korn--which I had decided not to plant--had suspicious looking dirty thumb-prints all over it and had been opened. So it looks like I might have some Northern Xtra Sweet Kandy Korn. I had intended to only do the Northern Xtra Sweet, but looks like I goofed up.

So, is Kandy Korn supposed to look like that? I tried finding photos of it on the web, but didn't turn up much. I also have a packet of Stowell's Evergreen which I didn't plant (I think).

Oops.